Advice on adding another hard drive to Emby HTPC

[FatherSaint 25]

Searches on this have only turned up old posts from 2014 / 2019, so I don't trust the information to be pertinent any longer.

- Emby (Premiere, current version) runs on a dedicated HTPC with Windows 11 Pro 24H2. No docker, Unraid or anything like that - simple as possible.

- Emby is installed on an NVMe Drive C. Media (Movies and TV Shows, nothing else) is on a single 16TB WD Red Pro hard drive, which is Drive D.

- I'm now down to about 2TB of available space and hoping to give myself a little more breathing room by adding a 6TB WD Blue drive that I already own.

I'm hoping that there is a way to configure Emby itself to somehow scan and use the content on the new 6TB drive as though it was on the original 16TB drive. My hope is that I would simply add a Movie or TV Show to the new 6TB drive and Emby would seamlessly set it up in the database as it would to the existing 16TB drive.

(I'm aware of StableBit DrivePool, but again, would like to avoid adding another layer of complexity unless it's really necessary.)

Any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated!

[TMCsw 249]

Just install the new HDD (internal preferred but a USB drive should work also).

Then create your directories.

Next go to  Settings-->Emby Server-->Library and edit each library by adding the new folder(s)  to the appropriate lib and emby will scan them as if they are one (and any new files added there in the future will be scanned in just like old HDD.

[FatherSaint 25]

Internal HDD, so that part was all set. This is fantastic, thank you - this worked like a charm. I considered DrivePool, but that's just another thing and another thing that I have to learn about. At my age that can be both a blessing and a curse.  --Adrian Monk

Thanks again. This is great,

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

6 hours ago, FatherSaint said:

Internal HDD, so that part was all set. This is fantastic, thank you - this worked like a charm. I considered DrivePool, but that's just another thing and another thing that I have to learn about. At my age that can be both a blessing and a curse.  --Adrian Monk

Thanks again. This is great,

FWIW: I use Drivepool and it would be overkill for just two drives. I have 13 external drives pooled into one huge volume. My total disk space available is about 86 TB. But i do not recommend using Drivepool for fewer than about 5 drives as it is easier to maintain separate drives than combined drives for Emby. But when I was initially setting things up the largest regularly available drive was 4 TB with some 6-8 TB drives beginning to show up. 

Recently I was rearranging things and I got clumsy as I was hooking things up and one of my external drives was knocked to the flour while running and that crashed it completely and I lost everything on it but I actually lost almost nothing as I have DrivePool configured so that all my movies and TV shows are "duplicated" and I just had to turn that function off and order a new drive. When the new drive arrived all I had to do was plug it in, add it to the pool, turn duplication back on and Drivepool moved everything around and balanced the pool and reduplicated everything. Note: Drivepool's duplication feature is NOT a backup it is simply redundant storage. That is if you are using duplication and you mistakenly delete a file it is not recoverable as "delete" deletes both copies. 

Really Drivepool is more for convivence for me than anything else but it does work very well. I would hate to have to manage each drive separately even though Emby would not care. 

If i was starting from scratch now I would probably just go with separate large drives but, since I am already set this way, I think I will just add new drives to the pool if needed. 

[FatherSaint 25]

FWIW: I use Drivepool and it would be overkill for just two drives.

It's now just the two drives, but I have 2 more internal bays available and a number of good hard drives. I was all set to jump into DrivePool, but came across a post on their forum that Read Striping is enabled by default and it's causing corruption. That got me wondering what other things I'd have to somehow know about to avoid losing my media. It's still on my radar, though.

Note: Drivepool's duplication feature is NOT a backup it is simply redundant storage.

Good point, yes. Like RAID, I guess, you still need to be doing backups.

If I was starting from scratch now I would probably just go with separate large drives but...

Because I'm apparently a slow learner, I started with two 4TB drives and thought 'that's more than I'll ever need.' Then came the two 6TB drives and the same thought. Then I thought, 'alright, let's go pretty big and definitely not have to worry about storage again.' Now those two 16TB drives are running low on space. It's clearly time to put those previous dust-gathering drives back into service somehow. This is where I've sort of lost the thread; multi-bay USB drive dock, NAS, a new PC case with more bays and UNRAID and just in the past couple days, maybe a new PC case with more drive bays and DrivePool... etc??

I've always bought two identical drives, one for actual use and one for backup in a drive dock. I know that a lot of folks will shudder at the thought of my single drive backup scheme, but I live life on the edge.  Now if I'm adding more drives, I'm going to have to come up with a plan for backing it all up.

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

4 hours ago, FatherSaint said:

Because I'm apparently a slow learner, I started with two 4TB drives and thought 'that's more than I'll ever need.'

My very first computer was a TRS-80 model 1 it had "storage" that was a cassette player. I upgraded it to a single sided floppy disk drive (128 k) and there I thought was all the storage i will ever need. 
I then a bit later upgraded to 2 double sided double density floppy drives (512 K each) and again that was all the storage i will ever need. 
I then upgraded to an IBM PC with a 100 mb hard drive and, again, that was all the storage I would ever need. 
I then went through about 5 different computers each one with more storage than the one before until I had about 4 tb total storage. 
I then discovered Plex and started adding storage and started to see the warts that Plex has in its Eco structure and looked for different/better media manager and found Emby.
From there I had added drives but quickly discovered that management of a number of different drives was complex at best and i discovered Drivepool and pooled my existing media storage and had about 20 tb total storage, and that was all i would ever need. 
I am now up to 86 tb and I may have to, pretty soon, add another 10 tb. as my 86 tb was not all I would need. 
I think my next upgrade will finally really be all I need as I am getting quite old and my warranty is running out so my body will have to be retired as the "Steve Austin" upgrades are not materializing and I do not have $6,000,000.00 anyway.

There is an axiom in computer systems that says: "Data grows to fill available space" and I think I have proved that, at least to my satisfaction. 
Fortunately/unfortunately  the next growth event for my data will probably be its last as my body is nearing its "EOL" and I think EOL trumps data growth. ( obtuse pun intended ) 

Have fun with your additional storage.  

[tedfroop21 86]

On 14/06/2025 at 17:11, TMCsw said:

Next go to  Settings-->Emby Server-->Library and edit each library by adding the new folder(s)  to the appropriate lib and emby will scan them as if they are one (and any new files added there in the future will be scanned in just like old HDD.

AND if you move files your watched status will not change.

One thing I do if moving files is, 

-create the new directory where I plan to move the files.  

-add the new location to the appropriate library.

-shut down Emby Server and move the files.

-restart Emby and confirm everything is OK.

-remove the old directory from the Emby library.

DO NOT put the same files in two locations that are location for the same library.  Bad things happen when you do.  

You CAN put them in a new library with a different name, remove the original files in the old location and after a restart of Emby rename the library.  If you do that emby will rescan the library though.  I have found if you do it as described above - Emby doesn't rescan or anything,  it just carries on as if nothing changed.

[FatherSaint 25]

On 6/16/2025 at 1:45 PM, Gilgamesh_48 said:

My very first computer was a TRS-80 model 1 it had "storage" that was a cassette player.

Laughing, you've got me on that one. MY first was an 8088 XT fancy-pants with TWO 5.25 floppy drives. Using those drives is how I learned the hard way the difference between a colon and a semi-colon. PFS First Choice had the program on one disk and the dictionary on the other and you had to B: to use it.

 

On 6/16/2025 at 3:44 PM, tedfroop21 said:

One thing I do if moving files is

My probably ill-conceived approach will be to just wait until the current 16TB is down to maybe 500GB and then just start using the newly installed 6TB drive for anything new. I tested the situation by putting a couple new movies and a TV Show on that 6TB drive and as TMCsw said it would, Emby was completely happy to carry on with business as usual.

Edited June 20, 2025 by FatherSaint

[FatherSaint 25]

On 6/16/2025 at 1:45 PM, Gilgamesh_48 said:

I am now up to 86 tb and I may have to, pretty soon, add another 10 tb. as my 86 tb was not all I would need. 

May I ask how you make the drives available to Emby? NAS, server of some sort...?

[Luke 42078]

On 6/20/2025 at 6:59 PM, FatherSaint said:

May I ask how you make the drives available to Emby? NAS, server of some sort...?

@Gilgamesh_48?

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

@Gilgamesh_48?

I do not  know about anybody else but I find that a decent Windows computer running DrivePool and just a few other necessary programs is about perfect for my Emby server. But I do not think my use situation is like many others as I have zero remote users and I am the only user in my home so, as long as you don't count my dog, I have only one user.

I do not really trust drives that are only accessible over the network so I combine my drives on the server computer. I am at 81 tb and climbing. A number of my current drives are in the 4-6 tb range and, when they reach their expiration date I replace them with 10-12 tb drives. DrivePool makes adding or changing drives easy and almost painless.

I "think" a small majority of users with a lot of storage use some kind of NAS device but that seems unneeded for me. I do know there are several people on here that have a LOT more storage than I do and some of those use DrivePool to manage their storage.

[FatherSaint 25]

Thank you! I've been considering my options and have been leaning more toward DrivePool as I look into this. The thing that's slowing me down is, now that I've treated Emby to, say, 40TB with drives & DrivePool, how do I back that up?!

Also, probably easier, I'd need to find housing for more than the two drives that I now have. (2 internal drives, 2 identical external drives for backup.) That's why I asked how you deal with what must be a lot of harddrives in the pool.

Thanks again.

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

4 hours ago, FatherSaint said:

Thank you! I've been considering my options and have been leaning more toward DrivePool as I look into this. The thing that's slowing me down is, now that I've treated Emby to, say, 40TB with drives & DrivePool, how do I back that up?!

Also, probably easier, I'd need to find housing for more than the two drives that I now have. (2 internal drives, 2 identical external drives for backup.) That's why I asked how you deal with what must be a lot of harddrives in the pool.

Thanks again.

You do not really have to worry about backing up your existing Emby setup as, if you use the same drives in the pool, nothing gets erased when you create the pool. Each drive gets a new directory called something like "PoolPart........," and you can just move the original data on the drive into the new directory and it will magically appear in DrivePool's new drive letter. So all you then have to do is add the new location to your Emby library. I recommend that you do not delete the old directory until the new one is fully updated. That way the metadata and everything else gets into Emby without Emby forgetting the original data. 

DrivePool also has a redundancy feature that creates a duplicate of every file you choose so a disk crash will not lose any protected data. But remember that the duplication feature is NOT a backup in that if you delete a file from the pool both the original and the redundant copy gets deleted. That is redundancy does not equal backup. 

BTW: I find using DrivePool and migration to it to be easier if you store images and metadata alongside the media. That rebuilds everything a lot faster than if you use Emby's library defaults. 

The best place to find out details of DrivePool's usage is on the StabilBit;s web site and its attached forums. That is where I got all the info I needed when I first moved to using DrivePool. The directions there are all I needed to get everything going.

Note: DrivePool does NOT erase anything from the drives added to the pool and all files are stored exactly as they are in Windows so, if you ever decide to move away from DrivePool. all your files will exist in readable form in the PoolPart.... directory on each drive. 

Note 2: I have found the people over at StableBit to be every bit as helpful as the people here. They are very easy to deal with.

Note 3: I only use the redundancy feature for data that is not easily recreated as data that is made redundant uses twice the space of the data itself. Two copies are kept in the pool but in using DrivePool you only see one.

I hope that helps at least a bit.

[FatherSaint 25]

3 hours ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

Note 3: I only use the redundancy feature for data that is not easily recreated as data that is made redundant uses twice the space of the data itself. Two copies are kept in the pool but in using DrivePool you only see one.

I hope that helps at least a bit.

It DOES help, thank you again!

I am mostly worried about the loss of Movies and TV Shows with a failed drive, having experienced catastrophic failure some years ago. I'll check out the StableBit forums for information as you suggested. Unless I'm being 'extra special again,' I'm not seeing how my concern about the media could be addressed, except by having double the amount of storage for regular and redundancy.

Off to do some reading!

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

2 hours ago, FatherSaint said:

I am mostly worried about the loss of Movies and TV Shows with a failed drive, having experienced catastrophic failure some years ago. I'll check out the StableBit forums for information as you suggested. Unless I'm being 'extra special again,' I'm not seeing how my concern about the media could be addressed, except by having double the amount of storage for regular and redundancy.

That is pretty much exactly what I do. I have had something like 5 drive failures in the last 10 years and the only time I lost anything important was about 3 years ago when I got clumsy and knocked three drives of their shelf when they were running. I had duplication turned on but redundancy does not protect from three simultaneous drive failures. Although DrivePool does assure that no duplicated file is duplicated on the same drive the original is on it does not protect from three drive failures at the same time. But, due to mainly luck I only had to re-rip four movies and one TV show. I had 12 drives at that time and I lost 1/4 of the available space so only losing four videos from losing three drives is not bad. 
BTW: I only use external drives for my pool and that makes adding drives to the pool pretty easy and DrivePool takes care of all balancing activities and assures that no drive is overused so that is one worry that is saved. Also Hard drives are pretty cheap at this time so adding more storage as needed is affordable even for those on fixed incomes, like me. 

[FatherSaint 25]

17 hours ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

BTW: I only use external drives for my pool and that makes adding drives to the pool pretty easy

Thank you again, x3 or 4.    If I may bother you one last time, I'm thinking a DAS now to deal with extra drives and to make my life as easy as possible. I definitely don't want to go the NAS route because I have NO Linux experience. I may just be too lazy to try find a server type of case that my current hardware would work in and then do the transition.

May I also ask what you have your drives IN - or how you have made them available to DrivePool?

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

3 hours ago, FatherSaint said:

Thank you again, x3 or 4.    If I may bother you one last time, I'm thinking a DAS now to deal with extra drives and to make my life as easy as possible. I definitely don't want to go the NAS route because I have NO Linux experience. I may just be too lazy to try find a server type of case that my current hardware would work in and then do the transition.

May I also ask what you have your drives IN - or how you have made them available to DrivePool?

I connect them to a computer's USB ports. (I use a USB extender to have more ports available. I just have them in a old style multi-level tray. I do not provide and additional enclosure as heat is the major enemy of hard drives. They are available to DrivePool because DrivePool and Emby run on the same computer. There used to be a limit on the number of USB devices that could be connected at one time to a single computer but that seems to have been overcome in the latest Windows 10 releases and I believe that Windows 11 also. (It is possible that i simply have not hit that limit recently as I keep my total number of external drives to 12 or so)

I thought about an enclosure for my drives but I decided that I did not need one and it would be nothing more than extra unneeded hardware and another potential point of failure. There a a lot of exposed cables and wires with my setup but I actually find exposed wires a comfort. and exchanging a drive takes less than 5 minutes.

I have everything, computer drives shelves and power supplies. on a single rolling set of shelves. That way I can move my entire Emby system anywhere I want without unplugging anything except the power and I have a UPS on that same rolling shelf system that can hold everything up for about an hour so moving my whole system is pretty simple.

I do not say my setup is "best" or even good for everybody but it does work for me and I have little problems as long as I make sure I don't snag any wires when working with my system.

But I am NOT trying to talk anyone into using a setup like mine. I do not think I am either typical or even perfect but what I have does work for me.

Oh, one thing I have not mentioned before is that DrivePool allows drives to be seamlessly mixed regardless of size or how they are attached to the computer. I have several different sized drives (from 4 tb to 12 tb) in my system and the last time I replaced a drive I put a 1 tb drive in place of a 4 tb one. That was seamless as well. 
DrivePool is about as close to a perfect system for me as there is, except, maybe, for a single 100 tb drive but I do not think those exist, yet. But they are getting closer all the time. 
I remember when double sided double density 5 1/4 inch floppy drives entered the computer world and their size was measured in kilobits and terabits were just a pipe dream of a very few engineers. My 80+ tb of drive space is a bit greater than the storage I had way back then. Now all I need is a better source of programming so my budget is not so impacted by acquiring media. It gets expensive fast. I could not afford my collection if my uncle had not left me his huge library. I just have added some to it. 
Of course most of his library was on DVD or VHS tapes and getting all that media on hard drives took time. A pretty great deal of time. 

My old mind sometimes gets off subject when thinking about things but I hope I answered most of your questions somewhere in this excessively long missive.
Sorry for the length.   

[StuBailey 35]

On 7/25/2025 at 11:44 PM, Gilgamesh_48 said:

I "think" a small majority of users with a lot of storage use some kind of NAS device but that seems unneeded for me. I do know there are several people on here that have a LOT more storage than I do and some of those use DrivePool to manage their storage.

I got rid of that NAS system and use SSD drives on a USB extender. Much better speed and far less likely to fail. Add another drive and simply add that drive path to the same library by repeat the same folder structure as the other drives and emby puts it all together as one. I just copy a drive to another drive as a backup. SSD drives are more expensive but worth it.

 

Movies library path on drive one D/Movies

add another drive and make another D/Movies folder. Drive 3 the same etc etc

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

1 hour ago, StuBailey said:

I got rid of that NAS system and use SSD drives on a USB extender. Much better speed and far less likely to fail. Add another drive and simply add that drive path to the same library by repeat the same folder structure as the other drives and emby puts it all together as one. I just copy a drive to another drive as a backup. SSD drives are more expensive but worth it.

 

Movies library path on drive one D/Movies

add another drive and make another D/Movies folder. Drive 3 the same etc etc

To be honest i do not care about drive speed for Emby as I find just regular drives perfectly fine. But i do recognize that my usage is, probably, pretty unique as I do NOT have any remote users and I. 99% of the time. only have one local user because i do NOT allow my dog access to my system at all. He is just too clumsy and drools too much. But that could also be said about several people I know.  

I am quite sure that overall speed could be improved by using SSD drives but, for me, it simply is not worth the expense. Also my experience with SSD drives is that they have a higher failure rate than regular drives.

Another thing that makes my setup unique is that my eyes do not really see that well and I cannot detect any difference between good 1080p and the best that can be acquired or ripped. That means that streaming a single file, which I all I can watch at one time, never even come close to buffering or freezing. I believe the largest file on my system is about 3gb and most are at or below 1gb and many are in the 600mb range or even less.

But my situation is not the "norm" for most Emby users so i try to indicate that when I make recommendations. However DrivePool does not slow things down enough to make a difference in any situation I have heard of. I do wonder just how much SSDs might improve things but I have not wondered enough to make testing worthwhile. The only time I wish I had more speed is when I am moving a lot of files and that is rare enough to make it only a wish and not a desire or a need.

BTW: I keep NO Emby system files in the pool, or any file that must have frequent updates. because having things like Emby database in the pool only make for a lot of database failures. 

[StuBailey 35]

4 hours ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

my experience with SSD drives is that they have a higher failure rate than regular drives.

Either is fine but for ssd drives failing more often are you sure you don't mean flash drives? In my experience flash drives need more care and you need to EJECT to avoid corruption. You can try getting one ssd drive as a test and then if you like it you can keep adding more. Even SSDs a bit old and slower work fine for viewing but might make you wish for more transfer speed like you're wishing for now. Being happy with your system is all that matters.

[FatherSaint 25]

On 7/27/2025 at 4:36 PM, Gilgamesh_48 said:

My old mind sometimes gets off subject when thinking about things but I hope I answered most of your questions somewhere in this excessively long missive.
Sorry for the length.   

Sorry for the delay, we've been away... That's perfect, thank you!