[mythtv-users] Partitioning advice request

Raymond Wagner raymond at wagnerrp.com
Fri Apr 15 00:54:45 UTC 2011


On 4/14/2011 18:36, francis3 wrote:
> I need some advice for partitioning mythtv storage.
> The system is a combined BE/FE 2.4Ghz P4 with 2GB RAM running debian stable,
> with 7 tuners and a single drive.
>
> I'm aware that an optimal design would dedicate a single spindle for each
> tuner, but this machine was built with silence in mind and extra drives would
> produce too much noise.

Modern hard drives are quiet.  You have more to worry about the fans 
needed to cool a stack of drives, than you do the drives themselves.  
Your bigger issue is likely going to be that P4.  The old Netburst chips 
ran hot and slow even when idle.  Replacing it with an AMD64 or Core2, 
with a big heatsink and slow fan, will go a lot further than limiting 
hard drive count.  A motherboard with a fanless northbridge cooler, and 
a high efficiency heatsink with a 120mm fan will also be noticeable.

> To improve performance the mysql files are stored in a ramdrive.

That is a terrible idea.

> swap
> /root 	ext3
> /video  XFS	(recording partition)
> /movies XFS	(mythvideo partition)
> /music 	ext3	(mythmusic partition)
>
>
> Before restoring from my backup when I'll get the new 2T hd, do you have any
> advice to increase performance with this single drive?
>
> Would I get any improvement dedicating a single partition to each tuner?

Getting your root (with database) and swap off the same disk as your 
recordings will go a long way to improving performance.  The problem 
with recordings is the disk flush loop in the MythTV file writer.  Seven 
digital tuners might manage as much as 20MB/s, and while linear 
throughput of that scale is not a problem on a modern drive, the rapid 
seeking is going to severely reduce the performance.  Fragmentation is 
going to make this worse over time, but XFS with pre-allocation should 
help in this area.  A low power 5900rpm drive was a particularly poor 
choice in this regard.

If your single drive does not meet your performance needs, the only real 
option is to buy additional hard drives.


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