[mythtv-users] ATA RAID Question

[davatar]

> So, you've got a choice. Buy a drive today that works right at the limits
> of PCI, and which will be just as fast if you upgrade your motherboard in
a
> year, or buy a drive that exceeds the current spec and will grow into the
> new specs and be "unfettered" by current tech.

Note, only a buffer burst is at the limits of the PCI bus, i.e. if you score
a 100% cache hit in your 2-8MB drive cache, you'll be able to pull it in
that fast, which is not going to be often. Media transfer rates are no-where
near the PCI-bus limit. That's what really counts, especially for things
like mythtv where the overall sync-to-disk  and read-from-media counts, not
how fast you can fill/unload your disk cache. You could run your drives in
ATA33/UDMA2 or less and not know the difference as far as mythtv is
concerned.

My point being that buying SATA drives now because you expect some huge jump
in the future is a bad idea, it's really only 'benchmark' numbers. Overall
performance between an equivalent SATA and PATA drive - in the future - will
probably be less than 1%. Better than the 0% you get now, but no where near
the boost you would get if you took the money you saved and just bought a
new drive with a higher media transfer rate when the 'future' arrived.