Improving disk performance

[Reddwarf]

At least once in our life we will ALL be the victim of Murphy's law...

[keith_leitch]

At least once in our life we will ALL be the victim of Murphy's law...

Yeah, but it seems to have happened to me about 25 times this week. Darn that Murphy!

I'm still trying to get my head around upgrading the disk access system. Let's say I see this reinstallation through to completion under IDE. Does that mean that I cannot convert the drive later without reformatting? If I do a backup (a proper one this time) would the updated drives be able to restore from the files created by IDE-enabled drives?

This all kind of goes to the questions of "how hard should I work tonight," and, "will I need to do it all again later?"

[keith_leitch]

But no, you won't be able to use the existing drive and keep the content without backing it up first.

I guess what I'm asking is this: If athi can't read an IDE-formatted drive after it is installed, then what good does backing up the original drive do? Surely it would be backed up in IDE, making the backup unreadable, too. Please enlighten...

[keith_leitch]

So, I disconnected my data drive (the only good thing I have left) and figured I would try moring to ATHI on the system drive, just to see what happens. Whenever I set my CMOS to ATHI, the system just blue-screens immediately upon leaving the boot menu; no prompt to press F6 or press anyhting else. Do I need to install the drivers first, then reboot and set the drive type in the CMOS?

[Reddwarf]

You can restore a backup of your IDE-drive to a RAID array. The filesystem is the same, just the bios that handles them different. But forget about the AHCI, just build your system as usual for now and make a complete backup of it once finished. Later you can buy a couple of drives and make a RAID array, then restore your backup to tha new RAID drive. You can read more about AHCI here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Ho..._Interface and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

[pBS]

to get ahci mode windows installed i usually just slipstream the windows disc with the drivers, injecting them into the installation files..so no bsod...but you have to rebuild windows install disk...
a little info about F6 method:http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/im...029979.htm

and you have a customized windows install disk..some of the questions have been preanswered in a script for unattended install..that's why it goes ahead and installs immediately..
but it should let you install with the F6 [first thing that pops up at bottom of screen during install] to add driver....if you don't get that, you probably have the cd connected to a ahci slot, [not all the sata connectors are raid,usualy 2 are normal ide always...connect cd there]
[check manual] at least i think that's why bsod on boot wo/F6 showing..

raid mode also includes the ahci benefits..

as far as ntfs links...you only set them one time for a whole directory, it makes the directory into a link to another drive.so only needs to be done once...and it's manual..
but it will make all future shows in that dir follow the link and record to the endpoint...
so it works on a whole series[dir]...
i just looked at schedule and found simultaneous records, then linked one of them to another drive...s owhen recording, one will go to recordings drive, the other to another drive..and that goes for all future shows with same title..
to undo it you have to copy all the files back and delete the link..

to windows,gbpvr and everything else, *all* files look like they're in main recordings drive..

[keith_leitch]

but it should let you install with the F6 [first thing that pops up at bottom of screen during install] to add driver....if you don't get that, you probably have the cd connected to a ahci slot

I get the F6 prompt if I boot from CD with everything set to IDE. I think it's probably what you said about the CD. I didn't realise there was a difference between SATA channels.

Since there is a difference, that raises another issue: how does one choose which hard drive to put on a slower channel? I have four ports on two channels, which restricts me to two faster hard drives, and I was hoping to install three: Two large ones for recordings, videos and other intensive data and one for the system. I was going to use my existing 750G drive, partition another 750G off a new 1.5T drive and use NTFS links like you are to share the recordings between them. I was going to use the "other" 750G partitiion for pictures, music, and a repository for data on my home network. I was going to take your advice and use an 80G drive for Windows, GBPVR and my helper software.

Presumably any DVD or Blu-Ray would stay on a slower channel.

(Actually, I prefer the idea of two drives as I don't physically have bays for three, but I can't see how to isolate the operations of just two. Are you sure a small system drive is beneficial? I guess it would isolate seek times better than a partition. A fourth drive just for cacheing and swapping has merit...see? I'm not ready for this. Needed planning time.)

raid mode also includes the ahci benefits..

But you don't use RAID, do you? Can you remind me of the reason?

More importantly, I can't seem to get clear in my head the impact that aither RAID or AHCI will have on my existing IDE-formatted data. Will I be able to read it? Will it be in danger of corruption? Will I have to transfer it from one of the slower channels before I can use it?

Some hard drives actually have RAID in their specification. Why would the drive itself care?

I am always wary of "Green Power" due to performance, but a cooler system is good and I've found this: http://www.gamedude.com.au/prod_show.php...ta_32green

as far as ntfs links...you only set them one time for a whole directory, it makes the directory into a link to another drive.so only needs to be done once...and it's manual..

This is an amazingly good idea. It might be one of the reasons you don't use RAID (although the performance benefits would be largely restricted to GBPVR recordings). I wonder how hard it would be to set it up to alternate drives and set a link to every SECOND recording that the service invokes? This would make the process invisible, as simultaneous recordings would be guaranteed to share across two drives, but it would also share the storage load more effectively, as one drive would "get a recording" and the next drive would "get the next recording". It might also require creating a folder, as the recording service would already believe it had done so.

[BigMoose]

Sorry to have missed this thread, got family staying etc... So yes, I was noticing performance problems recording two things at once, one SD, one HD (BBC HD - 1080i H264) while watching the in progress HD recording. I narrowed it down to the hard disk, (a 650Gb SATA1 running in IDE mode) and after discussion here I changed it to AHCI in the BIOS and installing the mb manufacturer driver things improved. Note on Vista or Win7 you dont need to reinstall the OS after turning AHCI on but you should use the latest drives from your motherboard manufacturer. Installing XP, you'll need the manufacturers XP driver to load at install time (but I think you've got past that skimming through this thread).

Since then I've stuck another 1.5Tb disk in for all recordings so now have the OS on a different disk.

However some testing keith_leitch did using other players to play back in progress recordings I do wonder if there's something more an issue with GBPVR... Either way I dont have the same problems any more...

[Jaggy]

Just thought I would add about my experience with raid for my recording drive, I can't guarantee that my problems were because of raid but if you have a read of this short thread http://forums.nextpvr.com/showthread.php?t=35428 you will see what happened first time. When I set it up the second time I used raid1 not job & it is now starting to show the same pre-symptoms that it did the last time before it went into error mode & I am about to copy my recordings onto a new 1tb drive & then delete the raid & set it up as 2 separate drives.

[pBS]

the thing about ntfs links is they only work on a whole directory, so different settings for single recordings is out...most of my shows are series so once i know which ones are recording at same time, i just move those to a new drive and the recording conflict is gone..
no real way to automate it..no real need to tho... i am working on a batch file to help find the conflicts and suggest which ones to move..
the schedule doesn't change much so new conflicts are rare..even then only 2 at once..
[assuming i've moved all other simultaneous recs. already]
my app will move existing series as well for you..

as far as raid is concerned, while the idea is nice, in my actual experience it's a nightmare...
mostly because of windows and how it uses drives, raid is unreliable..
mirroring mirrors windows errors too, and striping makes them dependants upon eachother, upping failure rates by more than 2 times...
only backups to alternate media are safe from all these...

the linux Unraid server is nice because it differs from most raids...
more media friendly...but still same overall drawbacks...[tho not all of them]
if i used any for pvr it would probably by my vote..

using ntfs links and multiple drives i get same benefits as raid [multichannel] without the risk..

i just put windows on a separate partition to isolate it for backups...only use about 10 g more than windows needs..performance shouldn't be an issue on win drive..just data drives...and gbpvr on a separate partition for it's backups, speed not an issue..
like a 3/ drive setup is great,
1. windows partition, gpvr partition and livetvbuffer partition...[to isolate it from recordings drv]
2. data1 preferrably ahci
3. data2 ditto
so if recording 2 shows and watching livetv timeshift, each would have it's own drive...
no fragmenting on any of them..