I need a HUGE disk drive

[Moltres]

I am making a Snapstream media center PC that records TV from 3 tuners and will need a really big disk drive. Is there a way to make three 250GB hard drives look like one big 750GB drive? Are there limits to the size of drive WinXP Pro will use?

 

[Zugzwang152]

Originally posted by: Moltres
I am making a Snapstream media center PC that records TV from 3 tuners and will need a really big disk drive. Is there a way to make three 250GB hard drives look like one big 750GB drive? Are there limits to the size of drive WinXP Pro will use?

1. You want to run RAID 0 with the 3 drives. I recommend a hardware RAID controller. Win XP can do this software-based, but it is slow (or can it only do RAID 1? I forget). You will need fast performance for your media center PC.

2. Win XP can handle volumes in excess of 2TB so you're well within the limit.

 

[Zero Plasma]

bump

 

[MDE]

Why not have each tuner record to its own 250GB drive?

 

[Zugzwang152]

Originally posted by: MDE
Why not have each tuner record to its own 250GB drive?

i'm guessing so he has a margin for error in case one of them goes over 250GB. of course if all go over 250GB, he's in trouble

 

[LED]

You can JBOD them as well...

 

[theblackbox]

it'd be just as well to just use one for each. I have beyond tv 3.5 with two tuners, and managed to record 88 hours of farscape the last two weeks, plus normal viewing and did not feel up my 160 and 120.
You'd have to record about evrything on to fill them up that fast, or just leave it on the hd. I usually burn shows to dvd each week.

 

[imported_Phil]

JBOD would probably be the best option, as you wouldn't lost 750Gb of data if one drive died; merely 250Gb.

 

[Zepper]

I third the Jabod idea - much less risky than RAID-0! The cheap SiliconImage based adapters work very well for that. Very nice LSI version on newegg usually <$50. Or if you're on a budget, the Syba on dealsonic.com for <$25. shipped will likely do just as well.
.bh.

:moon:

 

[TerryMathews]

Hmmm, Snapstream isn't smart enough to handle multiple video drives? SageTV is.

Ex: 2 120GB HDs, drives E and F. I can tell SageTV that videos are to be recorded onto drives E and F, go ahead and fill them, and it will fill drive E then start with drive F. It's even smart enough to place a file across two drives, if needed.

 

[theblackbox]

3.5 allows you to set folders for recording, the only thing is you don't have contol over which tuner is recording. i use one folder on 2nd drive, does everything. but i moved back to 3.4 due to 3.5 issues.
didn't like sagetv as much when i tried it.

 

[TerryMathews]

Originally posted by: theblackbox
3.5 allows you to set folders for recording, the only thing is you don't have contol over which tuner is recording. i use one folder on 2nd drive, does everything. but i moved back to 3.4 due to 3.5 issues.
didn't like sagetv as much when i tried it.

Both have their advantages and disadvantages. From what I understand, SageTV still has a commanding lead over the rest of the market if you want to use a client-server approach with real clients, not just MediaMVP boxes.

All of my SageTV boxes can read all of my TV shows recorded, plus all of the music in my iTunes library on my desktop and all of my anime in the video library. The overhead of transcoding for a MediaMVP (most of it's in Xvid/Divx) would be far too high.