Queue - Record All The Time Like TIVO or Not?

[mike1961]

Okay - so here's the question: When I originally set up my Sage system I made it so that turning off the TV would also put Sage to sleep. The advantage I though would be to make it so that my server is not always recording and and then erasing the program on the current channel. Makes sense since someone could turn the TV off downstairs while on channel 2 and the TV is off upstairs on channel 7. Then my Sage server is just recording and erasing programs for nothing while 2 tuners are being occupied also for nothing.

But, it seemed to rate lower on the WAF. She says to me, "I liked when I could just turn on the TV with Tivo and scroll back even if it was only 15 or 20 minutes with TIVO." Ahh, the nice thing about Sage is it records the entire program and then erases it. I asked her, why not just record the show and she says sometimes she doesn't remember (how is it that the TV just happens to be on the channel she wants when she turns it on)?

Anyway.......

My question: Are there any other disadvantages to having Sage record with 2 tuners 24/7? My first thought is possible fragmentation (but I do have the hard drive formatted to 64K clusters). Will it wear down the hard drive quicker (not that hard drives are expensive) but are there any advantages or disadvantages?

How do you all like to do this and why?

Thanks,
Mike

[ybrew]

In your wife's defense, she may not know something is on the current channel when she turns it on, but when she turns the tv on, the current channel catches her interest.

One thing I noticed during my trial - if I change the channel and change it back quickly, I don't lose what was recording before I changed the channel.

I REALLY like that feature. If my wife or I accidently change the channel, we won't really miss much if we change it right back.

TiVo will dump the buffer immediately if you change the channel.

[Todd33]

Tell your wife that's a waste of electricity and also shortens the life of your HDs.

I would kill Sage if it was keeping my PC on all night recording TV and deleting the files.

[mayamaniac]

Get at least 3 harddrives and set separate recording folders on each, then you can keep SageTV recording at all times. With multiple harddrives, SageTV will switch between harddrives and not record on only one 24/7. So since you want to record 2 tuners 24/7, you need more than two harddrives for it to alternate, giving one harddrive a rest while the other two are working. This way, the harddrives won't be spinning 24/7. I recommend Seagates harddrives since they have 5 year warranty.

Now, how does SageTV know what harddrive to use when a recording starts, according to Narflex, it is just smart and knows how to do it. Whether that means that it will alternate harddrive, I'm not 100% sure. I think you can test it or maybe someone more knowledgable can answer that. Also, SageTV will delete all previous Live TV recordings once the next one starts, unless you tell it to save. So basically, if your wife turns on the TV, only the current show is saved, whatever it recorded before that are deleted.

[ke6guj]

One thing I can think of, if you use "Intelligent Recording" you will probably get a lot of false positives since Sage is gonna be marking a lot of stuff as watched even though you never watched it.

[Polypro]

Sage should delete the files shortly after their Guide time ends...no?

P

[mike1961]

YBrew - your point is very good and I noticed that a while ago too. In fact, I noticed that if I accidentally changed the channel or hit STOP and then selected the channel again from the guide it would not delete the show unless a certain amount of time went by like you said. In fact, liked the feature so much that I made a post a while back that it would really be great to have something in Detail Setup to not delete any show until at least 15 minutes or some predefined amount of time went by so even if you accidentally changed the channel you would not have to panic and get back to the channel really quick.

mayamaniac - I'm not quite seeing your point about why one would need 3 hard drives. I have two - one for programs and permanent mpeg 4 recordings (so this drive is never fragmented) and my second hard drive which has only temporary files like (mostly) Sage mpeg 2 files, faxes, movietimes, etc. But, I just don't see ANY reason at all for a need for another hard drive. I have one file server and if Sage is recording two shows, it's just going to save two files (from both tuners) in clusters. All my tuners do hardware encoding and I have the drive formatted to 64K clusters so I don't quite see a reason for a third hard drive. But, I am questioning the life of the hard drive. In "THEORY" the heads never touch the drive so I'm not sure if there would be a lot more wear or not (along with the fact that hard drives are cheap anyway).

Regarding other posts - the server is on 24/7 so electricity is not a factor.

Thanks,
Mike

[mayamaniac]

Originally Posted by mike1961

mayamaniac - I'm not quite seeing your point about why one would need 3 hard drives. I have two - one for programs and permanent mpeg 4 recordings (so this drive is never fragmented) and my second hard drive which has only temporary files like (mostly) Sage mpeg 2 files, faxes, movietimes, etc. But, I just don't see ANY reason at all for a need for another hard drive. I have one file server and if Sage is recording two shows, it's just going to save two files (from both tuners) in clusters. All my tuners do hardware encoding and I have the drive formatted to 64K clusters so I don't quite see a reason for a third hard drive. But, I am questioning the life of the hard drive. In "THEORY" the heads never touch the drive so I'm not sure if there would be a lot more wear or not (along with the fact that hard drives are cheap anyway).

Regarding other posts - the server is on 24/7 so electricity is not a factor.

Thanks,
Mike

Lets clarify it.

In your original post, you said you want to have live TV recorded 24/7 on two tuners, and you were concerned about the life of your harddrives if data is constantly writing to them at all times, possibly causing framentation and wearing them down.

So in my post, I suggested getting 3 drives so that they can alternative the work load of recording live TV 24/7. With three drives, there's always one drive resting while the other two work. And so since none of the drives are being written to 24/7, that in theory, it would extend the life of the drives.

Is that understandable now or did I misunderstood what you originally said in the first post?

[jominor]

Originally Posted by mike1961

Okay - so here's the question: When I originally set up my Sage system I made it so that turning off the TV would also put Sage to sleep. The advantage I though would be to make it so that my server is not always recording and and then erasing the program on the current channel. Makes sense since someone could turn the TV off downstairs while on channel 2 and the TV is off upstairs on channel 7. Then my Sage server is just recording and erasing programs for nothing while 2 tuners are being occupied also for nothing.

But, it seemed to rate lower on the WAF. She says to me, "I liked when I could just turn on the TV with Tivo and scroll back even if it was only 15 or 20 minutes with TIVO." Ahh, the nice thing about Sage is it records the entire program and then erases it. I asked her, why not just record the show and she says sometimes she doesn't remember (how is it that the TV just happens to be on the channel she wants when she turns it on)?

Anyway.......

My question: Are there any other disadvantages to having Sage record with 2 tuners 24/7? My first thought is possible fragmentation (but I do have the hard drive formatted to 64K clusters). Will it wear down the hard drive quicker (not that hard drives are expensive) but are there any advantages or disadvantages?

How do you all like to do this and why?

Thanks,
Mike

I've got 3 tuners and 5(4x200g,1x160g) drives recording 24/7 and I've not experienced any problems. My server handles this.

My client requires a start up from standby but this takes 10 seconds maybe. My wife turns on the client by hitting a wireless keyboard and turns on the TV. We then startup Sage(which we kill before the standby) and we're off.

The whole procedure takes you from off to watching tv in about 30 secs.

No complaints at all.

[Menehune]

One problem I see is that the LiveTV viewing may interfere with any scheduled recordings if you don't have enough tuners to record the LiveTV and the scheduled recordings at the same time.

What I recommend is two tuners for a base system and an additional tuner for each LiveTV viewer. You may want to have at least three tuners-one for each LiveTV television and one for scheduled recordings. None of my systems view LiveTV so I only have 2 tuners in each. The systems are mainly VCR replacements.

[mike1961]

mayamaniac - okay, now I see what you are saying. You are saying (in theory anyways) that each recording would "skip" to the next available drive from the one currently recording. Sounds interesting but I'm wondering if it will actually increase the life of the drives much if at all. In your situation I would actually need 4 hard drives since my first drive has nothing but programs and permanent mp4 videos which is rarely written to and not fragmented and I would not want included.

I'm just wondering if I should let one drive do the work that might be replaced more often. Also - would the wear only be on the hard drive?

Regarding tuner availability issue - I see Menehune point and I have four tuners so that should not be a problem.

Thanks again,
Mike

[Menehune]

I feel that proper drive cooling affects drive life more than wear on the platters (how much the drive is written/read to). My server has three HDs-One small 20G for a system drive and two media drives-one for sage recordings and the second is an imported videos drive.

Unfortunately, my case does not have a HD cooling fan and the last time I uploaded edited movies onto the archived videos drive (about 15 min transfer and 15GB worth of data), I got SMART temperature alerts on the imported video drive. The imported videos drive is sandwiched between the two other drives.

[jominor]

Originally Posted by Menehune

I feel that proper drive cooling affects drive life more than wear on the platters (how much the drive is written/read to). My server has three HDs-One small 20G for a system drive and two media drives-one for sage recordings and the second is an imported videos drive.

Unfortunately, my case does not have a HD cooling fan and the last time I uploaded edited movies onto the archived videos drive (about 15 min transfer and 15GB worth of data), I got SMART temperature alerts on the imported video drive. The imported videos drive is sandwiched between the two other drives.

Try enclosures. The only drive I have in my server is the OS drive. All my data is stored on 200g internals utilizing USB2 enclosures.

I've got 9 USB2 drives and one USB2 tuner.

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by jominor

Try enclosures. The only drive I have in my server is the OS drive. All my data is stored on 200g internals utilizing USB2 enclosures.

I've got 9 USB2 drives and one USB2 tuner.

9 drives?

Can I come over and watch tv?

I would assume you've got raid, right?

My goal is 3 drives for recording (raid5), 1 drive for the OS, and 1 drive for Media other than recordings.

[jominor]

Originally Posted by ybrew

9 drives?

Can I come over and watch tv?

I would assume you've got raid, right?

My goal is 3 drives for recording (raid5), 1 drive for the OS, and 1 drive for Media other than recordings.

Only 5 are for TV! The other 4 are for my divx'ed movies. No raid though. I have backups(4 internal drives that I keep offline) for my movies, but I'm a little "looser" about TV content.

[dblaine2]

I have 4 drives in an enclosure - keeps em nice an cool. They are in a Raid 5. I have WD drives rated for 24/7 running (server drives).