[mythtv-users] Freeing up space for Christmas

[Brad Templeton]

On Thu, Dec 23, 2004 at 01:15:02PM -0000, Mark Crutch wrote:
> A few days ago there was a thread about freeing up some storage space
> temporarily. One of the best suggestions I saw was to copy the larger
> files to a second hard drive and set up a symlink to them.
> 
> Unfortunately I can't do that, as I run MythTV on a SFF PC which doesn't
> have space for a second drive. However, I wondered about doing the
> following:-
> 
> 1) Copy selected files to CD-R/W or DVD-R/W
> 2) Zero the corresponding files on the hard drive
> 3) Use the extra space over Christmas
> 4) When there is sufficient space again, copy the files back, replacing
> the zeroed versions
> 
> Would this work? Will Myth ignore the fact that the files have changed, or
> will it try to adjust the database accordingly? And if it does adjust
> things, will it readjust them correctly when the full-size files are put
> back?
> 

I don't believe it cares about the files (in fact it is annoyingly oblivious
to the fact that when a recording failed, no file is there, doing nothing
more than a diagnostic to the log file.)

However, just because you are SFF doesn't mean you are limited from adding
a temporary drive.  USB 2.0 external drive enclosures can be found for
$30 or so.   They are more than adequate in speed for myth, in fact
they are faster than ata-33.