[mythtv-users] Hardware Setup Advice
Simon Hobson
linux at thehobsons.co.uk
Wed May 23 13:53:34 UTC 2012
David Crawford wrote:
>However I'm sure there will be problems down the line as I have
>another PC setup with windows software with the same hardware and it
>encounters problems also when recordng many streams.
Your biggest issue will be disk seek times. Essentially, if you are
recording 18 streams, then you have 18 threads which are syncing a
file to disk once a second. This means the disk will be trying to do
18 seeks & writes/second - and a cursory look at the specs of most
disks will reveal that this is likely to lead to a bottleneck.
It's not the basic data rate that's the issue, it's the quantity of
seeks that kills performance.
Adding additional disks, each in a separate storage group, will
spread the I/O load across multiple drives and you should have a lot
less of a problem.
Eg, if you add two more drives, then you'll end up with around 6
streams/drive - if you can "about manage" now on 18, then around 6
should be no problem. Even a second drive should help.
As for using a NAS, it depends very much on it's performance.
Remaining polite, some NAS boxes "perform poorly", and it also varies
with access method (SMB vs NFS vs AFP vs ...).
--
Simon Hobson
Visit http://www.magpiesnestpublishing.co.uk/ for books by acclaimed
author Gladys Hobson. Novels - poetry - short stories - ideal as
Christmas stocking fillers. Some available as e-books.
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