Setting media locations : multiple machines, multiple drives

[rlawther]

  Hi,

 

  We've got a Watchout setup at the moment that has 1 head node (audio, no video) and 4 render nodes (video only). We use pre-sliced video content. Each machine has 3 hard drives in it.

 

  Let's say I have 3 video files, c.mov, d.mov, and e.mov. On my head node they are placed at

 

  - c:\content\c.mov

  - d:\content\d.mov

  - e:\content\e.mov

 

  However on the render nodes they get placed at

 

  - e:\watchout6\shows\showreel\Media\C_\content\c.mov 

  - e:\watchout6\shows\showreel\Media\D_\content\d.mov

  - e:\watchout6\shows\showreel\Media\E_\content\e.mov

 

  And so now my e: drive is full while the c: and d: are virtually empty. Is there a way I can specify where these files should be located on the render nodes so that I can spread them out across the drives?

 

  Cheers,

 

     - Rob

[jfk]

  Hi,

 

  We've got a Watchout setup at the moment that has 1 head node (audio, no video) and 4 render nodes (video only). We use pre-sliced video content. Each machine has 3 hard drives in it.

 

  Let's say I have 3 video files, c.mov, d.mov, and e.mov. On my head node they are placed at

 

  - c:\content\c.mov

  - d:\content\d.mov

  - e:\content\e.mov

 

  However on the render nodes they get placed at

 

  - e:\watchout6\shows\showreel\Media\C_\content\c.mov 

  - e:\watchout6\shows\showreel\Media\D_\content\d.mov

  - e:\watchout6\shows\showreel\Media\E_\content\e.mov

 

  And so now my e: drive is full while the c: and d: are virtually empty. Is there a way I can specify where these files should be located on the render nodes so that I can spread them out across the drives?

 

  Cheers,

 

     - Rob

 

Short answer to your specific questions is no.

All media for single show must reside on the same logical drive.

 

Would make some sense to combine like drives into a 

RAID to address this.

 

Otherwise,

Windows does provide a solution to your question.

You can combine multiple physical drives into a single logical drive.

For example:

 

How to Combine Multiple Hard Drives Into One Volume for Cheap, High-Capacity Storage

 

How to Combine Multiple Partitions Into a Single Partition

 

Basic and Dynamic Disks (Windows) - MSDN - Microsoft

 

etc.

 

If you want to install WATCHOUT on one drive and store media in an alternate location, see

info on the showpath command line switch in the WATCHOUT User Forum post

Forcing WO display pc's to use second disk

[rlawther]

  Thanks for the quick reply. I agree a RAID setup would have been a good choice when the system was first setup, but reconfiguring isn't really an option at this point. I'll see if I can get something working with junctions (ie. windows directory symlinks) https://technet.microsoft.com/en-au/sysinternals/bb896768.aspx.

 

  Thanks again,

 

     - Rob