[mythtv] MythTV & Hard Drives

Chris Liscio mythtv-dev@snowman.net
Sat, 7 Dec 2002 10:36:13 -0500


Hi everyone,

Perhaps some of you can help me out with my little side-project of
specifying a mythTV machine for potential "out of the box" sales.  I've
already had a few friends really impressed with the quality and would like
to see how low a price I can get for a machine.  Thankfully I already have
channels open to distributors, so the end-price should come to about the
same as parting the machine out yourself. (but saving the headaches)

So one thing I wondered today was what the slowest hard drive (running at
its maximum speed) needs to have (transfer-wise) in order to be a viable
candidate for a MythTV box.  I know that laptop HDs have increased in speed
quite a bit while they remain at about 4200RPM.  I think for the desktops, a
5200RPM drive would almost be sufficient, especially if it had a beefy
buffer on it.  Just wondering what you guys have experienced with slower
drives.  (hdparm speed numbers would be excellent for comparison, too).

Now it appears most of the stuff out there in the sweet price/storage spot
(around 60-100GB, maybe) runs 7200 RPM so I don't know how viable it is to
even look for the 5400RPMs (and save a measley 15-20 bucks).  I'm looking to
choose for silence before anything else, really.

Any ideas?  Comments?  I would also appreciate any comments (from
experience) about the sound difference between the Maxtor FDB 7200RPM models
vs. the WD FDB 7200RPM models?  The numbers on the respective web pages
favour the Maxtor, but the one I have here is faaaar louder than any other
7200RPM drive I've owned from IBM (from years back), so I don't know how
they obtained their measurements.  (Perhaps the posterior extraction method
was employed...)  ;)

Any feedback would be excellent.

Thanks,
Chris