USB hard drive usage

Ok, I have the Quad with 1tb internal. Now, I realize I can’t combine the 1tb internal with a usb external. My question is, once my internal is almost filled up, would I be able to transfer all that to an external hd? Then go back to using internal hd after I disconnect external hd?

You’re better off using one of the ripper apps that will pull the content off over the network. Swapping drives is tricky at best, and even after you copied them to an external drive, what would you then do with that drive?

See https://community.tablotv.com/c/tablo-apps/third-party-apps-plex/17

I’d just plug it back in when I wanted to watch something from it. Otherwise, I’m waiting for Black Friday for a good deal on a 4tb for the internal.

People say it’s possible to do that (swap the drives), but it has a non-trivial chance of messing up the drive and making it unreadable if you don’t do it exactly right. And it can take hours for the Tablo to sync all the content on the drive after the swap, before you can watch anything.

Seriously, copy the stuff to your PC, install Plex or Emby, and watch it that way.

Even if you do wait and get a 4TB drive, you’re still going to need to archive the stuff on the 1TB.

Oh, and a 4TB external or 3.5" internal for your PC will be cheaper than the 2" laptop size drive you need for the Tablo.

Well, since I’ve only had Tablo for 2 weeks, and internal only 1/5 full, I could live with losing all of it once I get a larger internal. What is the internal limit, btw. 8tb?

I think it’s limited more by the physical size of the drive, rather than the capacity.

I would think at least 8tb.

https://www.tablotv.com/blog/how-much-tablo-dvr-recording-storage/
article is a little old but I think correct.

here is another one not by table that is more recent that says 8 for internal as well.

It does say only 4 TB will fit currently so that is something also to look at for internal.

Maybe I will go for a usb-connected drive, after all. Would be cheaper :money_mouth_face:

I kind of stumbled across it by accident - (because) while resetting my tablos and “changing” drives with each other. Tablo2 came up as tablo1 with all it’s data intact. For me it was a pita, I didn’t think of it as “drive swapping” until @Steve427 brought it up in detail.

Personally I would not recommend it as a regular activity, although Steve427 has different experiences - likely depends on one’s skill-set.

Cloning or copying files (rsync) or even the backup-tablo.sh are fairly/really easy (just time consumeing), there are detailed instructions in several topics.