Author Topic: Storage  (Read 5405 times)

goings

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First off, I'm new to MusicBee and I LOVE it! Can easily organize my music files and get accurate tag information! Also re-ripping my CD collection into FLAC format.

Now my question. I use an external hard drive (hooked up to a wireless home network) to store my music. I have noticed that since downloading MusicBee, I am losing large amounts of storage space on my internal hard drive (approximately 60 GB). Is MusicBee storing information locally on my internal hard drive? Whenever I rip, I rip directly to the network external hard drive so it shouldn't be storing anything on my internal hard drive.

I have checked file folders and cannot determine where this space is going.

Bee-liever

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G'day goings
Welcome to MusicBee and the forum.

Is MusicBee storing information locally on my internal hard drive?

Yes. By default the MusicBee(MB) library, (which is actually the MB database, not necessarily the actual music tracks),  is located in your "My Music" folder.
You can change this in Preferences> Library> music library> Move Library

By default, MB also stores all it's settings and caches in %USER_NAME%\AppData\Roaming\MusicBee.  A large, well-tagged collection uses up a lot of space for caching Artwork, Artist pics, etc.
If you use the portable version, with MB installed on the external drive, these AppData files will be placed there instead of on the C: drive.
MusicBee and my library - Making bee-utiful music together

goings

  • Guest
By default, MB also stores all it's settings and caches in %USER_NAME%\AppData\Roaming\MusicBee.  A large, well-tagged collection uses up a lot of space for caching Artwork, Artist pics, etc.

I have the tags and album artwork written directly to the music file. Is it necessary to keep these things cached? Is there a way to clear the cache? If so, how does that affect the performance of MB?

Zak

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By default, MB also stores all it's settings and caches in %USER_NAME%\AppData\Roaming\MusicBee.  A large, well-tagged collection uses up a lot of space for caching Artwork, Artist pics, etc.

Is it necessary to keep these things cached?
Yep. Otherwise, any time MusicBee needs to display a track's artwork it would be intolerably slow. Any decent program that needs to do the same would use a cache for performance reasons.

Is there a way to clear the cache?
Yep. Tools > Advanced > Reset Artwork Cache

If so, how does that affect the performance of MB?
The next time MusicBee tries to display artwork for a track that isn't in the cache, it will use the embedded artwork to create a smaller copy and save it in the cache. So MusicBee will run slower for a while and you'll end up back where you started.


Regardless,  the artwork cache - or anything else MusicBee needs - shouldn't use anywhere near 60GB.
I've got 70,000 tracks and mine is 1.2GB.
Bee excellent to each other...

goings

  • Guest
Yea, I didn't think the artwork cache would be that large. My entire MusicBee folder is only ~130 MB. Will not delete cache; will not move library.

So it is something else that is doing it. Does it store data locally when I rip a CD even though I'm saving it to external?

redwing

  • Guest
What's your setting for Preferences> CD Ripping> Save to folder path? If that's not configured to your external HDD, that might be the cause.

goings

  • Guest
What's your setting for Preferences> CD Ripping> Save to folder path? If that's not configured to your external HDD, that might be the cause.

It's definitely configured to the network external. Here is the basic path: \\192.168.1.1\Goings\Music\Artist\Album (artist and album being each respective artist and CD).

redwing

  • Guest
Then why don't you search audio files from your internal HDD? 60 GB is huge and if that really resulted from MB, they must be music files.

Zak

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If you can't find where all that space has gone (and 60GB is a lot of space to go missing!), it might be easier to use a program like TreeSize to quickly show the size of all your directories:

http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/treesize-free-portable
Bee excellent to each other...

goings

  • Guest
If you can't find where all that space has gone (and 60GB is a lot of space to go missing!), it might be easier to use a program like TreeSize to quickly show the size of all your directories:

Thanks for this. I used it and found that the majority of what (I believe) was missing was due to system restore points. Avast set the max storage to 50% of my hard drive so it just wasn't deleting old ones. Got that fixed now and it deleted about 20GB.

Still may be missing some space (not sure if i overestimated what was gone), but it shouldn't keep disappearing like it was.

Thanks for everyone's help