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

[R. G. Newbury]

Marvin Match wrote:
> 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.

Well the real reason for adding only a smallish drive *was* that I want 
all of the video on one partition. I would use a small drive for the OS 
etc. and /video would be ALL of the big drive.

That was yesterday. Today, I saw an open trac ticket (1744) which is 
'in-process' for version .20. That ticket proposes to amend myth to 
allow the backend to have multiple partitions where video may be stored, 
and to have the backend search the partitions for the particular desired 
video. This would obviate LVM and certain problems with building raid 
arrays (but without raid's recovery potential). Of course, if one of the 
drives dies, it will take its files with it!.
Hopefully the change makes it to SVN shortly!

But THAT sounds like a plan to me, especially as my present BE/FE case 
will only hold 2 drives.

So, "Previous statements are inoperative".