[mythtv-users] Buffering LiveTV data to save hard drive wear?

[Roger Heflin]

John Drescher wrote:
>> Seagate (which is the only mfg I'll buy for the warranty) makes a DB35 line
>> specifically for DVRs
>>
>> http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/consumer_electronics/db35_series/
>>
>> Whether that truly is necessary for Myth or makes any difference, I doubt
>> it.  My drives don't seem to wear out any faster with Myth than any other
>> system I've used.
>>
> At work where we have several hundred IDE/SATA drives I do not see the
> more used ones having any higher failure rate then the lesser used
> ones.
> 
> John

I can second that.   I ran a large Linux cluster (2000 IDE disks) and later was 
3rd line support for several large Linux clusters (5000+ disks-sata/ide, ran for 
over a year), and even when the drives are used heavily that does not appear to 
affect the failures, a number of these drives had duty cycles >50% for months on 
end, pretty much seeking the entire time, and this did not seem to change the 
failure rate vs almost unused disks.

The disk used in the more recent ones were mostly WD, with a few other brands 
thrown in.

Almost all of the failures that I saw were media failures, I rarely saw a 
non-media (non-badblock) failure, the media failures were at least several times 
all of the other failures combined.

                                  Roger