[mythtv-users] Using firewire or usb external drives

emory emory.commerce at gmail.com
Sat Sep 10 23:06:19 UTC 2005


I agree -- don't go USB2.  I'm not a big protocol or benchmark expert,
but from my experience, USB2 is about twice a slow as Firewire 400.

I have a 320 GB Iogear Ion (combo USB2/FW400, 7200 RPM) hooked up to
my Pundit-R.  Transferring a 4.4 GB file over USB2 takes about 8 min.
over USB2, compared to 4 min. over Firewire.  That's about 75 Mbps for
USB2, and 150 Mbps for FW400.  I was pretty shocked that USB2 was that
bad, since it's advertised as 480 Mbps.  Over a cheapo 100baseT
router, I can get around 30-40 Mbps transfers.

Of course, I can't see why my FW400 is not coming even close to 400
Mbps.  I don't think it's my Pundit-R, since my powerbook only gets
slightly better results. It could be that the Iogear Ion has crappy
USB2 and FW400 chips.

another caveat is that the Firewire drivers on Linux are a little
flaky for the kernel (2.6.10) i'm using.  I've heard they got a lot
better in recent updates. the FW port on the Pundit is also in the
front behind the door, which is annoying.

but in general, you can record and play video fine over both USB2 and
Firewire.  You will take a significant hit when trying to transcode or
flag videos stored on an external HD. But Firewire is the way to go. 
It makes me sad that Apple seems to be neglecting it.

-e


On 9/10/05, Matt F <stir_frey at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> I've though about doing this a few times myself. I run my frontend and
> backend in the same small box and it would be an easy way to add drive
> space w/out putting another hot spinning disk in the case. Without any
> experience of running this type of setup I would suggest going firewire.
> Less overhead. www.firewire-1394.com/firewire-vs-usb.htm has a pretty
> good explanation of how the two technologies work and why firewire is
> still faster\better for something like this if you can afford it. FW
> tends to cost a little more. Also you can get 800Mbps firewire now. I'm
> not sure how many devices support this but I've seen it around. If you
> do go with this setup please post how it went and what hardware you used.
> 
> Matt
> 
> Henry Fleischmann wrote:
> 
> > Hello all,
> >
> > I'm setting up my first Mythtv system on Gentoo and had a question
> > about storage. What kind of problems will I run into if I base all my
> > storage for recorded programs, stored movies, MP3s, etc. on external
> > USB or firewire drives? For now I am putting my frontend and backend
> > on the same system (Asus Pundit-r 3Ghz, 200GB HD) which only has 1 HD
> > bay but I plan to move to separate frontend and backend setup if I
> > find Mythtv and I get along ok. External drives seem like a good
> > solution due to ease of expansion the ability to migrate them fairly
> > easily to other systems.
> >
> > Should I avoid I stick with one directory per drive and avoid JFS/XFS?
> > Is performance to low? Are their know problems with JFS or XFS on
> > these kinds of drives? If I add all the drives to one files system
> > will the spanned file systems be difficult to get back up on a
> > different system that recognize the drives in a different order than
> > the original?
> >
> > I am fairly familiar with JFS on SCSI drives using HP-UX (as of a
> > couple years ago) but have never used it on Linux or with IDE.
> >
> > Thanks in advance!
> > Henry
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
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