[mythtv-users] My perfect HTPC

[Brian Wood]

On Thursday, October 07, 2010 01:02:11 pm Gavin Peters wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 2:14 PM, Raymond Wagner <raymond at wagnerrp.com> wrote:
> >  On 10/7/2010 14:01, Josu Lazkano wrote:
> >> I need a PCIe slot on the board to add the DVB-S2 tunner, an if it has
> >> a mini PCIe slot for a little SSD drive, it will be perfect.
> > 
> > What use would a SSD be to MythTV?  On a backend, surely you don't intend
> > to record to it, and we don't generate enough database traffic for an SSD
> > to make sense.  If you're looking for boot times, just put it in standby
> > instead.  On a frontend, the only disk usage is going to be on startup,
> > and if you're looking to just get rid of a noisy hard drive, use network
> > boot.
> 
> Just brainstorming, but power saving?  On my BE, the six drives consume
> 5.5w each at idle, for 33W.  Divide by 80%, and we're at 40w or so of
> load, call it 30 kwh/month.  If you let the BE drives spin down when not
> in use, and record to SSD, you're likely saving quite a bit of power.  You
> can schedule migration of recordings to the spinning disks regularly.
> 
> Based on my electricity pricing, I'd save about $5/month for this.  That is
> $60/yr, and may well pay for a PCI-e SSD; a reasonable one is on newegg now
> for
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227596&cm_re=PCI_S
> SD-_-20-227-596-_-Product
> 
> 50 gigs probably fits my OS, database, and enough slop to save recordings
> for a day or so.
> 
>

The "record to SSD and migrate to spinning platters later" idea seems interesting. I wonder how the life of the drives 
would be impacted by the repeated spinning up and down, as opposed to just leaving them up all the time.

In addition to any power savings, you have to factor in the cost of replacing the drives if you are doing anything that 
adversely impacts their service life.

I wonder how much extra you'd be paying for the PCIExpress interface on that SSD, most SSDs have SATA interfaces, and most 
machines have a spare SATA connector, and you can stash the drive itself just about anywhere in most cases.

The problem is that SSD prices vary a lot, as does the quality of the drive itself (wear leveling algorithm etc.), so it's 
very hard to tell what, if anything, you're paying for that PCIE interface.

I wonder if OCZ will have a fight with Acer about the "Revo" name on that drive.