[mythtv] file checks in HandleQueryRecordings

[Martin Ebourne]

On Wed, 22 Nov 2006 14:40:49 -0500, Michael T. Dean wrote:
> To find out the pathname of the file--i.e. if it's available locally or 
> if it must be streamed from the backend (using a myth:// 
> pathname--dependent on the value of MasterBackendOverride and local 
> availability of the file or dependent on the recording host), to find 
> out if it's available (i.e if it's not available locally and the backend 
> that recorded it is down, it's not available), and perhaps more.
> 
> Why do you spin down hard drives in a non-laptop system, anyway?  The 
> following is an excerpt from the FAQ for the laptop-mode-tools ( 
> http://www.samwel.tk/laptop_mode/tools/faq.html )

Can't speak for the original poster, but I spin several of my disks down.
I do it to reduce power consumption, and also to reduce case temperature
in the summer.

> Spinning Down May Kill Hard Drives
> 
> Desktop hard drives are usually rated for only 40,000-50,000 spinups, 
> and one spinup every 10 minutes will kill your 40,000-spinup HD in 277 
> days. So this is NOT recommended for server use, unless you increase the 
> spinup interval dramatically, to say once every hour or two. Laptop hard 
> drives are usually rated for around 300,000 spinups, so those will last 
> about 2083 days or 6 years if you have them powered on 24-7.

Sure, but there's no point spinning a disk down for 10 minutes, and it'd
be daft to spin down a system disk on a server. But a lot of data storage
disks are accessed infrequently and it is well worthwhile spinning these
down. In my setup the disks spin up on average about 4 times a day. That
gives me 10,000 days of life. Somehow I don't think they'll last that long
anyway...

I haven't seen this issue though because I don't currently spin my
recordings disk down.

Cheers,

Martin.