Hello, I installed sparkbox on a device which only had 256GB of storage, but have added a a 2 TB secondary drive however I am not sure how to have sparkbox recognize the drive. Is this something that has to happen from the ubuntu server terminal instead of sparkbox? Thank you in advance!
5 replies
tomspark wrote:
You'll need to mount the drive on the host first, then point SparkBox's SBDATADIR at it. Here's the quick path: SSH into your server and run lsblk — find your 2TB drive (e.g., /dev/sdb1). If it's not mounted yet, mount it somewhere like /mnt/media with sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/media. Then edit /opt/sparkbox/.env and change SBDATADIR=/mnt/media (or wherever you mounted it), then docker restart sb-dashboard and the dashboard will start reporting free space from the 2TB drive instead of the 256GB root. For persistence across reboots, add the mount to /etc/fstab — ask me for the exact line if you need it, just tell me the device name from lsblk.
smeejon wrote:
Hi Tom, Appreciate your help on this. I did do all of the steps for the first part of this before adding the mount to /etc/fstab, but I am still seeing the same drive size not the 2 TB. After asking AI, it states that maybe the dashboard yml file could be reading the original drive size, but not sure how accurate that is. Thank you!
tomspark wrote:
The dashboard's disk-space tile caches its reading and doesn't auto-refresh when the data path changes. Two-step shake-out: sudo sparkbox restart dashboard Then in your browser hard-refresh the dashboard page (Ctrl+Shift+R or Cmd+Shift+R on Mac). It should re-read the array's space. If it still shows the old number, that tile is reading the SparkBox program drive rather than your media array — that's a cosmetic quirk, your actual media data sits on the 2 TB drive (check with ls /mnt/media). The yml file isn't the cause. Paste the output of cat /opt/sparkbox/.env | grep -i data if it persists and I'll pin it.
smeejon wrote:
Hi Tom, Thank you for that fix, it seems that the dashboard is displaying the correct drive space now. However, I was hoping to move all media files downloaded to the 2 TB drive. Am I able to go into the docker containers and switch where they download media and where jellyfin pulls media from moving forward? Also, is there a way to see both drives within my filebrowser app? I currently only see the files in my smaller drive where sparkbox and ubuntu were installed. Thanks!
tomspark wrote:
Good news — you don't edit the containers by hand (SparkBox rebuilds them and would wipe the changes). There's one setting that controls where ALL your media lives — downloads, the arr apps, and Jellyfin all follow it: MEDIAROOT. Right now it's still pointing at your small drive — it got locked in when you first installed, before the 2TB existed, so changing the data-dir line afterward didn't move it. Point it at the 2TB: open /opt/sparkbox/.env, set MEDIAROOT to your 2TB mount (e.g. MEDIAROOT=/mnt/media), then run sudo sparkbox up. After that, new downloads land on the 2TB, Jellyfin reads from it, and File Browser shows it. One heads-up: files already on the small drive won't move themselves — new stuff goes to the 2TB, so just copy the existing files over to the new folder once if you want them there too. (If you specifically want File Browser to show BOTH drives at once, that needs an extra mount — say the word and I'll set it up.)