[mythtv-users] Opinion on a P4 Backend // HDD Throughput

Kevin Kuphal kkuphal at gmail.com
Thu Mar 6 15:58:11 UTC 2008


On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 10:56 PM, Jeff Holicky <myth.myth_user at myth.sent.com>
wrote:

>  Thanks to all for your feedback - seems I am okay with my setup and will
> give it a go.
>
> Next is trying to price out a few FE's - for SD playback and also, when it
> is time, to buy some more robust FEs for later HD playback.
> On the splitting of drives - I fully understand where you are all going
> with that. I am developer and use Progress (transactional database/language)
> [now called Open Edge]. All transactions are written to the BI (before
> image) which then writes to the DB and then the BI records are committed.
> Works great if the system is shutdown or crashes since any partial
> transactions uncommitted will be backed out automatically upon restart;
> client disconnect etc.
>

Just FYI, MySQL is the only supported DB for Myth as I recall.

>
>
> Where I am going is that in a perfect world we would have a small 10GB HDD
> for the O/S; 5GB for logging; 10GB for the "BI" file and then multiple
> drives for each "area" (part of the total DB). Sadly the direction is bigger
> and bigger making such methods not cost effective. SSD's (solid state) have
> issues with the number of times being written to the same spot - logs would
> definitely be an issue. I have read there are improvements to spread the
> writes across different spots but that only works so much.
>

>
> I was considering an SSD for the FE's - to cut down on heat and noise -
> but even assuming there is little done by Myth with FEs (writing out) there
> still are logs from the O/S. CD is a thought (hate hate hate optics) but the
> concern is that it is a crap shoot whether you get a drive that makes noise
> (like an airplane) when accessed. HDDs - well back to the point of this
> email - I would love a small HDD that is quiet and cool - even a 4800-5400
> RPM would be sufficient for booting up. Haven't looked into that - any
> thoughts? Cheap too - seeing as they don't have to be more than say 5GB
> (something along the lines of the HDDs used by the iPods perhaps). But then
> the burn is the size - small = more money. I guess I can dream - but will
> still research that.
>

You must have a much larger budget for your system than I do to consider
SSD.  I would suggest CF drives.  There are some good threads in the
archives about filesystems designed for CF that work well with a frontend
that needs to do little more than play back files from a remote server.
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