[mythtv-users] Drive specs best for Myth

Kevin Kuphal kuphal at dls.net
Mon Apr 23 13:12:10 UTC 2007


Brian Wood wrote:
> 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.
>   
Actually, one drive (root) is on the main IDE controller as master.  The 
CD-ROM is on the secondary main IDE controller as master.  80-conductor 
cables all round.  The other two drives are on a PCI IDE controller each 
on their own channel as master.  Hdparm info seems identical across all 
drives (220MB/sec for the first measurement, 60MB/sec for the second)

Kevin


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