[mythtv-users] MythTV vs. Windows Media Center

belcampo belcampo at zonnet.nl
Sat Feb 12 11:35:32 UTC 2011


Reynolds, Brian wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org [mailto:mythtv-users-bounces at mythtv.org] On Behalf Of Rob Smith
> Sent: Friday, February 11, 2011 10:11 PM
> To: Discussion about MythTV
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] MythTV vs. Windows Media Center
> 
> 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).
> _______________________________________________
> 
> Rob,
> 
> Thanks for the advice.  I'll keep that in mind in case I decide to use MythTV.  I don't think MCE will allow me to direct the streams from individual tuners/channels to a specific drive (score one for Myth).  However, in the case of MCE, the effect of NCQ could be minimized (on either OS, actually) if I keep my drives defragmented.  The utility named MyDefrag (free) is excellent on Windows.  I run it on my personal machines every day.  They wake up at a non-peak time each day, run a daily defrag (among other tasks), and then go back to sleep (with a monthly full defrag on a pre-defined date each month).
If you use xfs as filesystem with allocsize=1024M, you'll almost have no 
fragmentation at all, and xfs_fsr is the defragment utility on this 
filesystem which works perfectly and can of course be scheduled.
> 
> If I decide to use Myth, I will definitely take your advice into consideration.  It's something that MCE cannot do, AFAIK (and I'm sure there are Linux equivalents to MyDefrag).
> 
> Of course, this brings up another topic...  can Myth and/or MCE be setup to go to sleep when nothing is recording and nobody is watching live TV?  I'm sure I can wake-up (either OS) when a scheduled program is about to start... but can they wake up when someone wants to watch a live TV and/or pre-recorded program from a front-end/extender?  I'm thinking that this will require using "Wake-up on LAN".  However, I don't know if the front-end (client/extender) will send the necessary "Wake up" commands.  In order to use this, will I need to setup my own work-around (either OS)?  I really like to keep my machines sleeping when possible.  Each machine costs me $6-10 (in electricity costs) per month when running 24x7.  I'm a cheap SOB. :)
> 
> Brian
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