[mythtv-users] Drive specs best for Myth

Brian Wood beww at beww.org
Mon Apr 23 04:06:06 UTC 2007


Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 04/22/2007 09:00 PM, Kevin Kuphal wrote:
>> What are the drive characteristics best for MythTV?  I'm trying to 
>> eliminate any IOBOUND messages and I'm thinking that my three drive 
>> setup isn't ideal.  I'm trying to decide if I need to focus on spindles 
>> (more smaller drives), seek times, RPM, or a combination.  I seem to run 
>> into trouble only when recording 2 HD, one HD commflag, and one or more 
>> SD recordings happening at the same time.  Right now one of the drives 
>> is being shared with the root partition of my system but I'm working to 
>> move /var (for the database and logging) to a separate drive to 
>> eliminate that as a source of IO contention. 
>>
>> If anyone has done some investigation into larger disk configurations 
>> and the specs that work best, I'd appreciate some guidance.  I'm 
>> currently limited to EIDE drives (no SATA controllers)
> 
> In my experience, the IDE controller has far more of an impact than the 
> drive itself (especially with today's modern drives--i.e. those large 
> enough (>100GB and typically > 160GB) to be worth using in a Myth box).
> 
> That being said, I can't really recommend a good one for you, but I'm 
> sure there are many on this list who can.  :)

The key here may be the "three drive setup".

Most mobos have two IDE (or ATA) controler ports, allowing up to two
drives each.

Assuming the OP has an optical drive in the  machine it means that one
of the hard drives is sharing an IDE port with it, normally considered a
bad idea if you can avoid it.

Also, you have to be sure and use 80-conductor cables in order to get
the fastest transfer rates. Use hdparm to get information about the
drive and its interface.


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