Improving disk performance

[keith_leitch]

You do it while formatting. For my recording partition, I usually format as NTFS with 64K allocation units.

The operating system drive, I just leave at default (4K).

RedDwarf recommends 2K for Windows, but I didn't realise that when I was formatting. I suppose I can always back up and restore if this is important. I will have to do so for the recording drives, also.

RedDwarf, do you think 512Bytes for the pagefile partition?

[keith_leitch]

You do it while formatting. For my recording partition, I usually format as NTFS with 64K allocation units.

Same for the Live TV Buffer, I'm guessing?

When I format under NTFS, the largest option I get is 4K. How do I increase this for recordings drives?

[Reddwarf]

Ypu should get hold of Paragon's Partition Manager, very easy to create/format partitions prior to windows install. With it you can move, change size and even change allocation unit size of partitions without losing data already on the partition. It's almost a must.

1024 or 512 will do fine on the swap partition. PM will also solve your problem with drive-lettering.

[re-Barr]

The page file is best placed on another drive from the OS. If you put it on the same physical drive then you might as well put in in the same partition (set the size so that you don't have to worry about fragmentation and your done). But if your system is just a pvr then I don't think you will have to worry too much about this.

If you are totally set on moving the page file then once you get windows reinstalled then you can remove the page file, reboot, then recreate it where you want it, and reboot again.

[pBS]

usually cables...check them all again...
also the power at back, it can get loose..
if all else fails, remove stuff till you get it back up then add it back..
how many watts ps?
even with 4 drives,plus extras, 300's are usually fine...but not if honkin video is used that requires a power connector..

[pBS]

i would unplug it and get rest, and watch it magically work perfectly in the morning...
you'll dream of sata and power plugs, and wondering what to do when now you're recording a thousand shows at once..lol [yea, you laugh now, it'll happen just like that]

Happy New Years! :eek:

oh and actually if you had a short there, the ps would have tripped circuit breaker inside, unplug the main power, hit front power button to drain leftover power. wait a minute or 2, check cables[sata too], plug back in and try..

[ilovejedd]

As mentioned, check for loose cables. That's often the culprit.

As for allocation units, assuming everything's going to be in the same hard drive, what I do is:
OS+Programs+Swap: 40GB, 4k cluster size
Storage (Recordings): remaining, 64k cluster size

Just make sure that you don't ever fill the OS partition to capacity. I usually size the OS partition so that at least 50% is always empty, that way, I don't have to bother with defragmenting. With a fairly clean XP+GB-PVR install, I'm only using less than 10GB space and that's including the swap file.

Just a note, using smaller cluster sizes than 4k can actually result in performance loss and higher fragmentation. The reason for choosing smaller clusters is if you've got a bunch of small files and would like to maximize space. You don't really need to go out of your way to use 512b, 1kb or 2kb clusters for your OS and swap drive.

[pBS]

i even have to leave about a 5th of the recordings drive free or defragmenting becomes a pain...[100g on a 500g drv]
i'm using 10g out of 20 for win myself..

oh and swap file doesn't get backed up so subtract it from backup size..

[pBS]

oh and i tried using a ram disk for windows,not worth it, and for gbpvr...also not worth it..
noticed no improvement...[a memory ram disk, not a ssd]

[ilovejedd]

i even have to leave about a 5th of the recordings drive free or defragmenting becomes a pain...[100g on a 500g drv]

Lol, this I don't bother with. I've never gotten to the point where a drive is fragmented enough that performance suffers. Besides, that's one of the reasons for going with 64k clusters - so there wouldn't be a need to defrag.

Then again, I only have around 170GB allocated for temporary/local DVR storage. Whatever shows I might consider keeping gets moved to the 12TB unRAID server .