[mythtv-users] Dec 2008 - State of the Art - Hard Drive Recommendations?

[John Drescher]

On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 8:27 AM, Sandy Walsh <swalsh at impathnetworks.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Seems like this is a question that occurs pretty regularly, so let's take a
> snapshot of the "state-of-the-art" for hard drive selection. I'd love to
> hear all of your opinions on the following.
>
> What would you say are the most important criteria for selecting a PVR hard
> drive?
>
> 1. Is it Interface? PATA? SATA? ATA-100, 133, 150, 300?
>
SATA 2, None of the other are being manufactured today.

> 2. Capacity? Is it simply Gigabytes per Dollar (G/$) or do drives just get
> flaky over a certain size?
>
1.5 TB Seagate  $129

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337

> 3. Is it Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF)? Is this a meaningful metric
> anymore?
>
> 4. What about RAID? Good or Bad? Good for peace of mind, Bad for
> performance? Recommendations for/against using RAID? What about software
> raid (useless?)
>
Although on my current master backend I do have software raid5 for the
os (not the videos), I am switching to independent drives when I move
all the drives over to the new sub $500 Intel Q9550 system I bought on
black friday (cpu + 6GB of quality pc6400 ddr2 + asus p5pro + antec
650+ ps). I currently have 3 Seagate drives (400 GB 7200.7, 320 GB
7200.10, 750GB 7200.11) in the new system and it idles around 100W. I
am adding this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817995001

so I can add the 4 other Seagate (SATA 3x 320 7200.10 + 1 x 500GB
7200.11) drives from the old system. I will have them all spin down
after 5 hours of inactivity.

>
> 5. Rotational Speed? Is it a factor?
>
Buy only 7200 rpm drives. Or if you want the 5400/7200 dual speed wd drives
>
> 6. Average Seek Time? Do technologies like Western Digital Intelliseek make
> any difference or just get in the way?
>
Although some drives are a little faster with seeks, the differences
will not be a large factor on a myth system.
>
> 7. Vendors? Seagate? Western Digital? Hitachi? Samsung? Any warrenty horror
> stories? Others to consider?
>
I buy only seagate (at home and at work) because of the 5 year
warranty. Although this will end soon. I have 200+ Seagate SATA2
drives between home and work.
>
> 8. Cache size? Since this is mostly a Write operation activity does cache
> really affect performance? How important is a large cache?
>
Get only 32MB cache drives. This means you have the current technology
and not drives that have sat on the shelves for years...
>

John