[mythtv-users] An SSD for Backend OS / Database Drives?

[PJR]

On 15/03/12 02:50, Andre wrote:
> On 15 Mar 2012, at 03:13, Douglas Peale wrote:
>
>> On 2012/03/14 02:29 PM, tortise wrote:
>>> My Server's OS/Database HDD is possibly showing signs of aging being an 
>>> older and noisier 7200 120G that's got a few bad sectors reallocated.
>>>
>>> Having found SSD on frontends give a significant user speed upgrade 
>>> (faster on/off and faster menu responses) I am now considering replacing 
>>> the backend OS drive with an SSD. (Also 3 x 2TB drives for recordings 
>>> seem happy there)
>>>
>>> Some of the new 6G series 3 SSD's such as the Adata S510's seem a 
>>> possible replacement, capable of 550/510MB read and write speeds.
>>>
>>> My motherboard (Gigabyte GA-EP31-DS3L)is a SATA 2 which I understand to 
>>> mean it can transfer 3Gb/s over the SATA interface.
>>>
>>> There seems little point in spending extra on SDD's that run faster than 
>>> the SATA II interface, unless there is no disadvantage...
>>>
>>> The b and B's might be confused somewhere, however it seems the full 
>>> 550/510MB read and writes may be available on the SATA II interface.
>>>
>>> If one uses a SSD on a backend (no frontend use) then the only 
>>> difference I expect I am going to see is faster mythweb page loads, 
>>> which might be nice for the recordings page.  The frontend recordings 
>>> lists might also populate quicker.  This basically assumes the database 
>>> reads are read from the disc and not from RAM, my understanding is its 
>>> done from the disc, if so there seems considerable scope for speeding up 
>>> the user experience that relies on the myriad of reads?
>>>
>>> Can anyone comment about this analysis, do you agree or see it 
>>> differently?  I presume some people have now done this, what has been 
>>> their experience?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>>> http://www.mythtv.org/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>>>
>> I have been using a SSD as a boot disk for a while now.
>>
>> Pros: I no longer have corrupted recordings due to the disk taking too long to respond (database was swamping the HDD)
>>
>> Cons: Ubuntu does not boot reliably with a SSD. About one in 5 boots hangs dumping me into busybox, and I must type exit to
>> continue the boot. This is a problem because I let my system shut down when idle.
> Ah yes, forgot to mention this, in my defence I very rarely reboot. Ubuntu has some race problems on booting, I found that I needed to put all the recording drive mounts in to rc.local rather than fstab then it booted reliably, I also have to remember not to log in straight away or myth-backend won't be running yet as my tuner cards take a while to initialise.
>
> Nice problem to have :-)
>
> Andre
> _______________________________________________
>
I've been running my mythtv 8.10 FE/BE system for several years now with
a 30MB SSD for boot and everything but /var/lib/mythtv on which is
mounted a standard HDD. I've had no problems including running it in
shut down in idle mode.  No changes from the standard install other than
shut down mode and other features not connected with using an SSD.  My
new 11.10 system in development has a similar configuration using a 60MB
SSD and 1TB HDD RAID-1 for mythtv recordings etc.