[BadOmen]

Greetings! I have researched and failed to find someone with a similar situation, so if what I am asking is old news, I apologize and would appreciate if you could point me a similar thread.

My video library is split in multiple hard drives. For years I have been reusing old, small capacity hard drives to store those. 

I have one docking station plugged to my Shield where I would like to connect those drives and watch what's inside. 
This is how I envisioned it - and I am sorry if it sounds absurd:  I would roll around my Movie library and stop at a video I want to watch. Among the video information displayed there would be a custom field with the name/number of the hard drive where that video is, so I would know which one to bring to the docking station.  BONUS if the video poster becomes greyed out or somehow marked in the library to show that the video is not in the currently connected hard drive or my humble network storage. 

Perhaps there is some skin that provides that? Or a way to edit a skin and create a custom field? I am open to all suggestions and greatly appreciate your help.

[Klojum]

Best advice to give you is for you to name the diskname of each HDD separately, so that Kod/Android will also use separately drive device names for each HDD. You should be able to identify the correct drive in Kodi's Information page for each movie.

This is all not a skin thing, but core Kodi functionality. There is also no additional custom field within the current database schema. Video posters being greyed out could be perhaps become a thing in Kodi 20.

[BadOmen]

Thank you for your answer. The only place I can find a file location path is in a small line at the bottom of the screen when I go to Information > hover over the Refresh button. 
And even then, the hard disk names are not recognized. What I see is a path like storage\5054d10972d144f8\myvideo.avi.  Maybe because the drives were named in Windows?
I use version 18.9 with Estuary skin.
It would be great if I could reach and read that information more easily.

[Klojum]

The only place I can find a file location path is in a small line at the bottom of the screen when I go to Information > hover over the Refresh button. 

That's the one. Alternatively you could dive into the Videos/Files section, and browse through your videos there.

What I see is a path like storage\5054d10972d144f8\myvideo.avi

I don't know which disk format your HDDs have. But Android (Linux) will create is own unique ID to identify connected harddisks. Usually Linux will adhere to the current diskname of the drives, at least with the EXT4 format. With the NTFS format, I honestly don't know what Android is is up to lately. Do your drives have any unique disknames at all?

[BadOmen]

I don't know which disk format your HDDs have. But Android (Linux) will create is own unique ID to identify connected harddisks. Usually Linux will adhere to the current diskname of the drives, at least with the EXT4 format. With the NTFS format, I honestly don't know what Android is is up to lately. Do your drives have any unique disknames at all?

Yes, all disks have unique disknames. Most of them are NTFS though, and even though Kodi's file manager recognizes their names, the File Path field only shows the ID. 
In any case, I wonder if I would be able to customize a skin in a way that the File Path would be displayed along with the video's basic information at the main Library screen (when flipping through the movies, without a need to click on them). 
Would that field be something that one can play with when redesigning skins?

[DaVu]

I wonder if I would be able to customize a skin in a way that the File Path would be displayed along with the video's basic information at the main Library screen

Yes, that's possible. There's: 

"ListItem.Path" - "Shows the complete path of the currently selected song or movie in a container"

Might be a tricky hack to integrate it in a way it will look nice. Some file-path can be pretty long. 

Probably "ListItem.FolderName" might be better for that. 

Have a look here and search for "path" on that wiki. Maybe there's something which fits for you. 

https://kodi.wiki/view/InfoLabels

Covers being greyed out if the wrong hard drive is connected is not possible. It's not an interactive DB. It's a normal SQLite DB. Kodi will list the movie at it's library section which is stored into its library. Kodi will only check if the path exists after you try to play the video. If the wrong hard drive is connected, Kodi will claim that the movie is not present anymore and if you want to remove it from your library. You are for sure able to cancel that removal, but Kodi won't tell you to plug a specific hard drive into your doc. 

My recommendation would be: 

• buy yourself a NAS and be done with plugging and unplugging HDDs
  

or 

• get one big HDD and put all the movies on it (might depend on the amount of single HDDs you already have)
  

[BadOmen]

Thanks for the tips. I'll give skinning a try. Even if it doesn't look that great, it's still worth it.
I have a 2-bay NAS, not acquired for that purpose though. It would be nice to have all my video content available at all times, but that would mean investing in more equipment and probably replacing my smaller yet functional drives for new and larger ones. I really just wanted to repurpose those 1TB drives, avoid dumping or leaving them gathering dust, and save a buck while doing it.

[jbinkley60]

Thanks for the tips. I'll give skinning a try. Even if it doesn't look that great, it's still worth it.
I have a 2-bay NAS, not acquired for that purpose though. It would be nice to have all my video content available at all times, but that would mean investing in more equipment and probably replacing my smaller yet functional drives for new and larger ones. I really just wanted to repurpose those 1TB drives, avoid dumping or leaving them gathering dust, and save a buck while doing it.

I see you have the drives plugged into a Shield.  If it was a Windows machine instead then you could run Mezzmo with the Mezzmo Kodi Addon and it will dynamically detect media as you browse your library and only present what it finds, which I think is what you are after.  For instance you can scan all your drives into its library but when you go to browse a folder it will detect what is there and only present what is available and not what is off-line.  This is more of an out-of-the-box thinking option and if you went this route, you'd likely connect the drives full-time to the Windows system.


Thanks,

Jeff

[BadOmen]

Thanks, this sounds like a pretty interesting option. What I needed was a bit of the other way around though:  I wanted to have all videos showing in the library at all times, and when hovering over them the screen would show their path. So basically the library would be telling me "Yamato DVD version -  Path:  /MyHardDrive#4/YamatoDVD".  I would go to my shelf, pick HardDrive#4 and stick it to the docking station, making the files available again.

And unfortunately I don't have the option to connect the docking station to a Windows machine. Could be to the Shield, to the router or the NAS, but none of them are Windows.

[jbinkley60]

Thanks, this sounds like a pretty interesting option. What I needed was a bit of the other way around though:  I wanted to have all videos showing in the library at all times, and when hovering over them the screen would show their path. So basically the library would be telling me "Yamato DVD version -  Path:  /MyHardDrive#4/YamatoDVD".  I would go to my shelf, pick HardDrive#4 and stick it to the docking station, making the files available again.

And unfortunately I don't have the option to connect the docking station to a Windows machine. Could be to the Shield, to the router or the NAS, but none of them are Windows.

Ok.  That makes sense and my approach wouldn't solve that.  For what you are describing, your thought on a skinning approach may be the best option.  I an think of a couple of options either leveraging tags but that would separate your media up into different groups or an addon which would be similar to a skin based approach.


Good luck,

Jeff