[mythtv-users] MythTV vs. Windows Media Center

[Rob Smith]

On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 6:38 PM, Reynolds, Brian
<Brian.Reynolds at fiserv.com> wrote:
> I'm planning to build the machine with two 1TB 7200 RPM drives
> configured in a RAID-0 to maximize throughput on the serial reads/writes
> that will be required for playback/recording.   I'm thinking that this
> will be needed for recording (or watching live TV, with a buffer) so
> many HD streams simultaneously and also the possibility of streaming
> several pre-recorded streams out to the extenders/front-ends/browsers.
> I've chosen a case with enough space for additional drives for more
> throughput/storage-space (just in case it's needed) and/or configuring
> them as a RAID-1+0 for redundancy, although I don't feel that the
> content will really justify a need for redundancy.  As Ben Kamen says...
> television isn't THAT important (but it's a pretty funny thing to say on
> a list that is dedicated to recording TV).

Do yourself a favor and keep the drives separate.

We balance recordings between the drives so you'll get better
performance overall keeping them as fully independent targets.

If you raid-0 them, one recording will stress both drives, you're NCQ
depth is limited at 31 outstanding io requests vs 62 for the two
drives independently.

Another reason, if you lose one, you only lose half your recordings
rather then all of them.

Just as a point, my current usb 2.0 drive handles 10 HD streams at
once just fine (3 writing, 6 flagging, 1 playing).