Adding a hard drive and moving files

[tesla1886 3]

I currently only have a 10 TB hard drive that only has slightly more than 800gig free. This drive currently holds 179 movies and 85 tv series'.

I have ordered and will be receiving a 22 TB drive on Friday. I will move all the tv series' (the bulk of what is eating up the 10 TB drive) to the 22 TB and leave the movies on the 10 TB.

I also have the following folder structure:

• DVDs
  • Movies
  • TV

I will eliminate at least the first level folder (DVDs) and maybe the second level folders as well (Movies and TV). In other words the path will change for all the media I currently have in Emby, most if not all the drive letter will also change, depending on what letters I decide to assign each drive.

My question is I have made quit a few custom edits to the meta data that I do not want to lose. If I backup the meta data will I be able to restore it the way it is now, even though the path and in most cases the drive changed without major (and preferably minor) headaches?

As suggested in another thread I have enabled "Save artwork into media folders". Is this the best way to backup meta data?

Also what do yinz suggest to back up your media files. 10 TB (and growing) is a lot of data to back up. Especially when services like Google or One Drive only provide 15 or 5 gig free respectively and large enough drives are expensive, should I look into a RAID (which can be extremely expensive)?

Thank You

[Neminem 1518]

I would start by using this plugin, it should copy metadata to media folders.

And that should preserve your custom edits.

 

[ebr 16169]

And then I would look into a drive pooling solution so you will never have an issue with this again.  I use StableBit DrivePool.

[yaksplat 66]

i have a 24 drive server.  Each drive has its own backup drive.  Every 15 minutes i have a powershell script robocopy the files over and the backup mirrors the main drive.  I don't like raid anymore when talking about drives that are 20TB each.  

I have had drives go bad.  I pop a new one in and copy from the old one.  I have yet to lose a file in 15 years. 

I usually end up replacing a pile of drives with a larger one, even though they're not bad.  I just recently eliminated a few 2TB drives that have been in service for almost 16 years.

[tesla1886 3]

On 1/23/2026 at 9:35 AM, ebr said:

And then I would look into a drive pooling solution so you will never have an issue with this again.  I use StableBit DrivePool.

Are suggesting I combine the two drives, instead of leaving them separate

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

If he is not I am. It makes management so much easier. Particularly when you add your third or fourth or fifth drives. And you do not have to worry about moving any files after you get DrivePool set up and when you need to add another drive you just add it to the pool and then Drive takes care of balancing and making sure all files can be seen by Emby. I have 12 drives all managed by DrivePool  and I will soon add a 13th and all I will need to do is plug it in and add it to the pool and DrivePool will take care of everything else. That is after adding that drive all the drives will look like one big had drive and Emby will see it that way. BTW: DrivePool does not prevent using the drive added as a regular drive as well as the pool consists of all the drives with sub directories named PoolPartxxxxxxxxxx and those subdirectories are what is actually pooled. Also all the file are stored in the pool in regular Windows format so, should something disastrous happen, your files still exist and are accessible as simple regular files.

Edited January 25 by Gilgamesh_48

[justinrh 259]

21 hours ago, Gilgamesh_48 said:

I have 12 drives

Just curious as to where these drives live - internal, external (USB?), network iSCSI or what?

[Gilgamesh_48 1240]

33 minutes ago, justinrh said:

Just curious as to where these drives live - internal, external (USB?), network iSCSI or what?

All my drives on my server are connected via USB except the main system drive and one other. The loss in speed is not important as video or audio playback is not drive intensive and transcoding, in the very rare case it is needed, is handled on my system drive. 
Btw: If you do use usb drives be aware that, unless you take a LOT of care or use some kind of USB enclosure, the arrangement ends up looking quite messy once the drive count gets above 4 or so. I like the view of a lot of wires and it comforts me to see that everything is hooked up correctly every time I pass my server. But I do wish that drive manufacturers would standardize their connections as I would like to replace my cables with much shorter ones.   

[js28194 36]

Since it's USB drive (or internal) to a bigger USB drive (or internal), I suggest:

Plugin the new drive and either start robocopy or unstoppable copier and copy the drive structure identically.  Emby can be running and you can enjoy watching while this is happening.

Once completed, shutdown Emby, assign a different drive letter to your first drive, and assign your new drive the driver letter or your older drive.

Start Emby and enjoy.  Leave the old drive with a different drive letter available for abit, just in case.

You only have one drive, being replaced by one drive... none of the fanciness comes into play.  Solve your problem first, then think about NAS / Raid blah blah blah... etc etc.

 

Also, you need to help us understand what OS you are using... once you move all the files, can the your "new" drive letter be extended and create a larger drive? All that underlying OS stuff if you will be trying to extend (for example) a F: drive from 22TB to 32TB.  Maybe using windows maybe using gparted or whatever exotic OS you may be using.

Edited January 26 by js28194