mvdisks behaviour

[4ndy]

Sorry, I have another newby query.

If I use the Humax GUI to move/copy from an external drive to the internal drive , the Humax thinks it is moving rather than copying, as previously the case. This I can understand with my limited understanding of what mvdisks is designed to do. The issue is, the files neither move or copy, they stay where they were.

As a consequence I have had to uninstall mvdisks in order to copy these files to the internal drive (to unprotect some HD files, prior to moving them back). I had already found that copying via the web interface made the files unplayable, with an on-screen warning about encryption.

 

[Black Hole]

This is one of those unintended consequences for people who thought it would be a good idea to make recordings stored off-box accessible within My Video rather than having to educate their users in the "difficult" process of pressing the blue button to select the external storage. As far as the Humax firmware is concerned, the external storage mounted by mvdisks is indistinguishable from the internal drive, so naturally the red button option is "Move" rather than "Copy", and the decryption process is not invoked. The move does not work because there is normally no need to actually move the data on the physical disk - the move operation is quick because all it does is update the directory database. A move using the WebIF would not invoke decryption in any case, you need to decrypt as a separate operation.

I am not familiar with having mvdisks installed; if the external storage is simultaneously accessible via the normal USB navigation, select that rather than the mounted image. If not - you have a reason for abandoning mvdisks and going back to the blue button navigation.

 

[4ndy]

I agree. mvdisks seems to be a two edged sword.

I was late to CF, and so I have about 2tb of archived recordings that, although organised, would benefit from deduping, shrinking and decrypting was hoping that I could automate this. I think I will stick to what I know and manage the process manually.

I am not at home, to check, but I are hoping that the new web interface still allows manual dedupe, decrypt and shrink on external drives, because they did work, it was just the automatic process that didn't.

 

[af123]

mvdisks does confuse the standard UI move/copy, but otherwise it is (now) fairly side-effect free. It provides the opportunity to expand your recording space as you can record directly to an external drive and to have recordings on an external drive server via DLNA too.

The CF automatic processing works properly with it now (as of webif 0.13.1) as do the manual operations.

The drive is still available via the blue button so that provides a method of copying content using the standard UI.

 

[4ndy]

Thanks af. I can see how mvdisks would always regard a blue button move/copy operation as a move rather than a copy. The issue I am reporting is that an operation I would expect to move a file from several folders deep on the USB drive to to a sub-folder in the internal drive leaves the file in the original place.

Are you saying that it will eventually move the file - after the "Moving.....' message disappears? I only gave it a few minutes before leaving for work. I will be able to check tonight.

 

[Ezra Pound]

4ndy, I think the answer in no, the file won't eventually be moved. If you imagine a hard disk (or a partition of a hard disk) to be a physical book, the 'move' only changes the table of contents of the book, it doesn't physically move the chapters within the book. Because unlike a real book the operating system for the hard disk doesn't care where the chapter is as long as it can be accessed, This works as long as the move is within the same hard disk, BUT a move to a different hard drive requires a copy followed by a delete. The Humax is not expecting a real 'move' from one hard disk to another

 

[mole_hill]

I use mvdisks and my understanding of it is this:

You cannot move anything between internal and external drives and vice versa using the mounted folder under my videos. It says it is moving but nothing happens or will ever happen!

However, you can COPY between internal and external drives and vice versa but you must not use the mounted folder path under my videos. So... if you want to copy from external drive start by using the blue button to select the USB drive and then copy the file to HDD. If you copy from internal to external once you press the move/copy option you need to navigate to the location on the USB using the USB path at the start of the choose location "pop up" window. You basically need to carrying out the operation as if the external drive wasn't mounted.

The mvdisks package is still useful you just need to understand / work around the move/copy issue.