[mythtv-users] New system build. Looking for opinions.

[Brian Wood]

On Jun 21, 2006, at 4:29 PM, R. G. Newbury wrote:

>
> My reaction is exactly the same as Marvins.
>
> Although you may have a 120G drive lying around, I would strongly
> suggest that you need another drive.
> I started with a single 120G SATA drive, and I find I am constantly
> fighting to  keep the 92G video partition from overflowing. I am about
> to put the smallest 3Gb/s SATA drive I can find, into the box, to  
> use as
> an OS drive, and dedicate the 120 to video...that will give me back  
> the
> 30G presently used by Fedora. Interestingly, the smallest drive I can
> find is 80G!! For $59.00 Canadian... while a 320G SATA drive is
> $137.00..(but 1.5Gb/s I think). Storage usage in myth is QUITE  
> different
>   than you are used to.
> The ONLY thing my wife watches live anymore is Oprah in the afternoon,
> when she is home, and some news and weather. There are still about  
> 6 VHS
> tapes with programs recorded for her and then it will be all mythtv.
>

Don't be concerned with a SATA drive having "only" a 1.5Gb interface.  
No ATA drive made today can saturate even the 1.5Gb interface, never  
mind the 3.0Gb one (there are solid state "drives" that can do so  
with the 1.5).

In fact, the fastest SATA drives on the market today are 1.5Gb  
interfaces. The 3.0Gb connection, sometimes mistakenly called  
"SATA-2" may be a good thing for the future but today it is a  
marketing parameter not an engineering one.

I'm surprised you can't find smaller than 80Gb., they are certainly  
available in the US. 60Gb and even 40Gb can be found, but I wouldn't  
suggest buying one - you can always use the unused space on your "OS"  
drive for music, games,. your database and other non-video Myth stuff.

You could always get a RAM-based 4GB drive for your OS, REALLY fast,  
unless you count the reload time when the power fails.