[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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