[mythtv-users] Hard drive speed?

[Stephen Worthington]

On Thu, 17 Nov 2016 20:46:30 -0700, you wrote:

>My hard drive may be failing, looking into getting a new one. I saw this 
>question was asked before, however it was over 10 years (!) ago:
>
>http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/users/163754
>
>The advice and thinking may have changed since then. I can get a 5TB 
>7200 RPM drive or a 6TB 5400 RPM ("NAS") hard drive for about the same 
>price. Thoughts?

If you check the write speed of your old 7200 rpm drive against the
write speed of a new 5400 rpm NAS drive, you will find it is way
slower.  The sequential write speeds have increased quite a bit,
mainly due to the much higher bit density on each track.  What has not
changed much is the stepping speed between tracks.  So current
desktop, green, NAS and enterprise drives all work well with MythTV,
except that desktop quality drives are not rated for 24x7 operation.
Seagate desktop drives especially have a very high failure rate, and
if run 24x7 it can be as high as 20% per year.  Stay away from them. I
have a mix of WD green, WD red, Seagate NAS and some older 7200 rpm
Hitachi drives, and they all perform well for MythTV.  I think the
best bet is a NAS rated 6 TB (or bigger) drive from WD, with Seagate
NAS drives probably being OK too.

However, if your operating system is going to be on this drive as well
as MythTV recordings, then you should get the 7200 rpm drive - speed
is all important for the database and general operations.  But better
is to install an SSD for the system and database and just use spinning
rust for recordings and other storage rather than operational things.
I have installed a Samsung 950 Pro M.2 NVMe SSD now for my system
drive and it is excellent.  Since I had an older motherboard, I had to
buy a PCIex4 card to put it on, and free up an x4 slot to put that in,
but it was well worth the trouble.