[mythtv-users] My perfect HTPC

[Gavin Peters]

On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 3:20 PM, Brian Wood <beww at beww.org> wrote:

> On Thursday, October 07, 2010 01:02:11 pm Gavin Peters wrote:
> > On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 2:14 PM, Raymond Wagner <raymond at wagnerrp.com>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > What use would a SSD be to MythTV?  On a backend, surely you don't
> intend
> > > to record to it, and we don't generate enough database traffic for an
> SSD
> > > to make sense.  If you're looking for boot times, just put it in
> standby
> > > instead.  On a frontend, the only disk usage is going to be on startup,
> > > and if you're looking to just get rid of a noisy hard drive, use
> network
> > > boot.
> >
> > Just brainstorming, but power saving?  On my BE, the six drives consume
> > 5.5w each at idle, for 33W.  Divide by 80%, and we're at 40w or so of
> > load, call it 30 kwh/month.  If you let the BE drives spin down when not
> > in use, and record to SSD, you're likely saving quite a bit of power.
>  You
> > can schedule migration of recordings to the spinning disks regularly.
> >
> > Based on my electricity pricing, I'd save about $5/month for this.  That
> is
> > $60/yr, and may well pay for a PCI-e SSD; a reasonable one is on newegg
> now
> > for
> >
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227596&cm_re=PCI_S
> > SD-_-20-227-596-_-Product
> >
> > 50 gigs probably fits my OS, database, and enough slop to save recordings
> > for a day or so.
> >
> >
>
> The "record to SSD and migrate to spinning platters later" idea seems
> interesting. I wonder how the life of the drives
> would be impacted by the repeated spinning up and down, as opposed to just
> leaving them up all the time.
>
> In addition to any power savings, you have to factor in the cost of
> replacing the drives if you are doing anything that
> adversely impacts their service life.
>
> I wonder how much extra you'd be paying for the PCIExpress interface on
> that SSD, most SSDs have SATA interfaces, and most
> machines have a spare SATA connector, and you can stash the drive itself
> just about anywhere in most cases.
>
> The problem is that SSD prices vary a lot, as does the quality of the drive
> itself (wear leveling algorithm etc.), so it's
> very hard to tell what, if anything, you're paying for that PCIE interface.
>
> I wonder if OCZ will have a fight with Acer about the "Revo" name on that
> drive.
>
>
All excellent points.  My presentation was adversely affected by my
machine's lack of a free SATA connector.

- Gavin
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20101007/1a9d4735/attachment.htm>