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

[Marvin Match]

On 21 Jun 2006 at 18:29, R. G. Newbury wrote:

---snip---

> 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.

Advertised drive interface speed is almost a non-issue with MythTV. 
Back in the early days when I was just trying to figure all this out, I 
once ran 4 PATA-66 5400RPM drives. I don't remember them being 
noticeably slower than the SATA drives I'm using now... just way too 
small, but it was a fun experiment, and proved a point. This was SD 
only, before I started playing with HD content. Naturally if I have a 
choice, all things being equal (including price) faster is better, if only 
for bragging rights.

But I'm curious... why would you want to add a SMALL drive? 
Seems a lot of bother to gain only 30 GB.

For MythTV, storage space matters and I always look for the most 
storage per dollar when I add a drive. Using your examples: the 80 
GB drive gets you 1.36 GB per dollar, but the 320 gets you 2.33 GB 
per dollar, or if you'd rather, 74 cent per GB for the 80, but only 43 
cents per GB for the 320. The bigger drive is a better deal no matter 
how you slice it.

The smallest drives still in my system(s) are a pair of 200s. All the 
rest are 400's. Everything smaller has been replaced. Come to think 
of it, the 200s are PATA-100, the rest are SATA-whatever. Makes 
no difference that I've ever noticed.

Marvin