Hard Drive Question...

[robhix]

Hey all,

I have an older computer (1.2 GHz Athlon Processor, 2 GB RAM) that has IDE drives. I want to use this computer as my Sage computer. At the most I want two recording sources, and I can forsee them both recording at the same time. This motherboard only has IDE (PATA) interfaces. Will I be ok using 7200 RPM Ultra ATA 100 drives, or do I need to go after the 7200 RPM Ultra ATA 133 drives. I do not have a problem if I need to put in a drive for each capture source (e.g. a whole drive for source 1, and another whole drive for source 2). The reason I ask is that I am having problems finding higher capacity Ultra ATA 133 drives.

Thanks for the help,
Rob Hix

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by robhix

Hey all,

I have an older computer (1.2 GHz Athlon Processor, 2 GB RAM) that has IDE drives. I want to use this computer as my Sage computer. At the most I want two recording sources, and I can forsee them both recording at the same time. This motherboard only has IDE (PATA) interfaces. Will I be ok using 7200 RPM Ultra ATA 100 drives, or do I need to go after the 7200 RPM Ultra ATA 133 drives. I do not have a problem if I need to put in a drive for each capture source (e.g. a whole drive for source 1, and another whole drive for source 2). The reason I ask is that I am having problems finding higher capacity Ultra ATA 133 drives.

Thanks for the help,
Rob Hix

Most decently new hard drives are able to record to shows at one time. Even HD only has a max of 2.5MB/s and SD @ 3.2GB/hr is still less than 1MB/s. Even my 5+ year old Western Digital 80GB PATA drives can do a sustained 30+ MB/s.

As far as interface, something else to consider, even the fastest Hard drives available today only have a sustained speed of about 80MB/s which is still less than the theoretical max of 100MB/s of ATA100 (okay there are some Solid State Drives that can sustain over 100MB/s but they are impractical at this point for video storage).

[Polypro]

You'll be fine. I regularly see 5 tuners recording whileI'm watching another...no probs.

P

[Djc208]

Might also consider a PCI SATA card. Would give you up to 4 internal SATA I or II ports. Even seen one with 4 internal and 2 eSATA ports and without RAID they're pretty cheap.
That way if you upgrade the server later you won't be stuck trying to make them work with newer MBs that only support two PATA drives.

[davephan]

Make sure that you format the video storage drive with 64K block size.

You may have problems trying to playback compressed video. I used to use an Athlon XP 2100+, it was barely enough CPU to playback Xvid AVI files without stuttering. The computer with the Althlon XP 2100+ died and I had to use an older Althlon XP 1500+ computer while waiting for CPU prices to drop. The Athlon XP 1500+ computer isn't enough CPU to watch compressed video without severe frequent stuttering. Make sure you have enough CPU if you compress video.


Dave