Enough juice in my specs?

[bizztizz]

I've been running GBPVR for a few years now, and it's performed great for my analog days, but am really relying on it more for HD now. I find my Analog recordings turn out just fine, and playback on anything I download (HD or SD) looks great, but my HD recordings are not always reliable. I get some audio sync issues with 720p, and any HD seems susceptible to tearing, skipping, and altogether crappy recordings (Not always, but not reliably good). I've found ts mux seems to work the best on my recordings, but am wondering if maybe my hardware needs an upgrade? Here's my specs:

Windows XP Pro SP2
Intel Pentium D 925 3Ghz
XFX nForce 650i Ultra Socket 775 Motherboard
XFX GeForce 8400 512MB PCIe
2 GB DDR2
Maxtor DiamondMax 21 200GB Hard Drive
WINTV 1600
WINTV 350


Any comments would be appreciated.

[pcostanza]

You should be fine as far as I can tell but with hard drives so cheap and HD taking up more space, you should get a bigger drive. One with a 32MB cache and at least 7200 RPM. I find simple things like defragging my drives once a week a big help.

[bizztizz]

I hadn't thought of a Hard Drive upgrade, my OS is on an old old 80 GB hard drive ripped from my old system, would that have any affect on recording performance? (My recordings are all written to the 200 GB Maxtor). I do defrag every week, but it only has an 8 MB cache, I may try something with 32 MB and see if i get better recordings.

[zehd]

I hadn't thought of a Hard Drive upgrade, my OS is on an old old 80 GB hard drive ripped from my old system, would that have any affect on recording performance? (My recordings are all written to the 200 GB Maxtor). I do defrag every week, but it only has an 8 MB cache, I may try something with 32 MB and see if i get better recordings.

I had an old OS drive and the computer made quite a bit of clicking noise of course. I swaped out the OS drive for a new 500 GB drfive.

I actually partitioned the new drive so that only 40 GB for OS and the the rest for a nother drive.

C: 40 GB (WD - partition 1)
D: 300GB Maxtor
E: 460 GB (WD - Partition 2)

I know that seems strange, but to windows, it looks like the C drive didn't change (just got quicker and quieter) and I strapped on an extra drive...

[bizztizz]

That's an interesting idea with the partitions, is there an advantage to having the OS on the same physical drive? Any recommendations on a brand? I'll obviously go for whatever's fast and big, but reliable and efficient would be nice too.

[pcostanza]

I personally always partition my drives but I also keep video on a completely separate hard drive for both safety and I think, speed (though some may disagree).
If you have a smaller hard drive, the effort needed to continually move around files will slow it down but I'm not sure that's a problem in your situation.
I just got a 500 GB Seagate from ZipZoomfly this week for $69 with shipping. I've seen them for $10 less so keep checking newegg, TigerDirect and buy.com daily and you'll find it. Heck, I picked up a 1 TB before Christmas for $99. :p

[bizztizz]

I'm going to keep my eyes open for a deal on something like this Thanks for the recommendations.

[pcostanza]

buy.com has a 'green drive' with 16mb cache for $65.00
http://www.buy.com/prod/western-digital-...38351.html

But, TigerDirect has the Barracude with 32mb of cache for the same price.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/...&CatId=139

I wonder if prices will continue to drop as fast. They were falling fast the last month of the year but haven't moved too much since. I've also seen warranty's go from 5 years to 3 years which is not great news but understandable in these tough economic times.

[bizztizz]

That Barracuda looks pretty nice, it's too bad the 1 TB version is more expensive than two 500 GB. That might be a nice option.

[zehd]

When drives and the windows perform correctly, my drive scheme works fine. Anything modern should be fine.

The reason I use a smaller OS partition, is for backup and restore reasons (using ghost)

I keep video on a separate drive too. Only my main programs are installed on the OS drive, all other data (including My Documents) move away from the OS drive