[kneighbour]

I seem to have lost a hard drive (yet again) in one of my XBMC media HTPCs. So I will have to change the drive, reinstall Windows 7 and then XBMC yet again. I have done this many, many times.

I have all the media files on a central NAS, so nothing is lost there. The problem is I have lost all the setup inside XBMC, All the fanart is gone, and also the watched/unwatched status. This latter one is extremely useful to me. Now I don't know where I was up into n many TV series....

I have seriously considered dumping XBMC and going to Plex for this very reason alone. But Plex seems very buggy, and indeed might also lose the watched/unwatched status. Not sure.

Anway - my question is - can I store the XBMC settings and watched/unwatched stuff - and the fanart - on a central server (ie the NAS)? I have two media HTPCs with XBMC on - so two folders on the NAS could be setup.

Is this possible?

[sub0ptimal]

If you set up mysql, then your view state (watched/unwatched) is in the database. So you can wipe out your HTPC and everything is fine.

Fanart/thumbnails can be stored on your NAS by using <pathsubstitution> entries or symlinks in the userdata folder.

The other configuration stuff (sources etc) I store locally, because I like to tweak each HTPC individually. Just back up the .xml files in /userdata manually.

[robweber]

You can also check out the XBMC data sync addon (in beta - seems to work for most people) to keep things in sync. Or there is an XBMC Backup addon in the Programs repo for a "one-shot" kind of backup of your entire userdata folder to an external location.

https://github.com/declankenny/XBMC_datasync

[kneighbour]

I have found the MySQL option. And I seem to have a test setup using it ok. Pretty confusing stuff - but finally worked out how it works. the problem being that every site that explains how to do it (so far) has been wrong! I am still confused about some of the fine details though. If I look in the MySQL DB, it seems to store the movie data ok, including fanart. I guess it stores the watched/unwatched status, but did not see that. If the MySQL solution does it all, then it will be perfect.

I am not sure about the <pathsubstitution> and/or symlinks. I think I can just use symlinks as I am using Windows 7 machines. Again - why is this needed if the MySQL DB is storing the fanart? Or is that only posters? Ah - maybe I have it worked out - the DB only stores the link to the fanart - the fanart itself has to be stored in a symlink location. Ok - will give that a try.

Does anyone know what table/field in the DB stores the watched/unwatched flag? If I know, I can simply go through and update those shows I know I have watched using a SQL script of some sort. Or simply use a MySQL front end to directly edit the table.

[Ned Scott]

If you still need it, our MySQL (wiki) guide is up-to-date and correct.

[sub0ptimal]

It's true that some sites have outdated info. In particular the Lifehacker article that tops Google searches is wrong for Eden. The wiki located on this site has the correct info.

The image resources themselves are not stored in the mysql database. These are stored in the userdata folder. If you want these files to be saved on the network, you can use symlinks in Windows, or you can edit the advancedsettings.xml file to add the path substitution info. I believe that the end result is the same.

EDIT: The play state (date last played, number times played) is in the "files" table.

[artrafael]

I seem to have lost a hard drive (yet again) in one of my XBMC media HTPCs. So I will have to change the drive, reinstall Windows 7 and then XBMC yet again. I have done this many, many times.

Doesn't address your question regarding XBMC and NAS, but I would be concerned that you are having so many hard drive failures. Is this system a laptop that you are moving around a lot? If it's a desktop system, your drives shouldn't fail very often. Are you sure the drives suffered hardware failures rather than just data/partition corruption?