Just finished order, have two questions

[DWeade]

I just ordered the SageTV + WinTV 350 combo. I also just ordered all of the other components to build an HTPC. The only thing I don't have is a hard drive.

I own a DVD burner and I'm ordering an external harddisk enclosure to use to backup the shows I want to keep. Here are my questions:

1. I'm planning to order 120 gig drive for the PC. Does anyone else have Win2K, SageTV, firewall and antiviral software running while the drive is both capturing and playing back? Do I really need two drives: one for the OS/SageTV and the other for capture/playback? Or will a single drive fill my needs?

2. I own a DVD burner and am purchasing an external drive enclosure so I can share it between my desktop and this PC. The motherboard I purchased has USB 2.0, but not Firewire. Anyone have any experience running an 8x DVD burner through a USB 2.0 connection? Does this work or should I expect it to choke? I'm trying to decide between a USB 2.0 enclosure and a Firewire enclosure that will cost me one of my two PCI ports to put a firewire card in.

Thanks,
D Weade

[DynamoBen]

I have a similar setup based on your description.

I have 1 160 gig HD. I just partitioned it into two drives one for OS and software the other for shows/video (formatted 64K blocks). Works like a charm.

That being said I did add in a small 1 gig drive to hold the swap file. That shouldn't change anything though.

[remmy925]

I would say as long as you have a good firewall it shouldnt eat up too much cpu and should be easily setup to allow channel updates. It should see sage try to reach out over the net and ask you if its ok. As far as the antivirus, it should be fine. I would suggest that you set up an exclusion rule to disable scanning of your media drive. You are making the video files yourself and they dont need to be scanned. It should also keep from needlessly tieing up the antivirus be scanning every media file you create when you try to view it.

As far as the choice of usb 2 or firewire, you have to ask yourself this. Will I share my usb 2 connection with other devices or will this drive be the only major external item I will be using. Firewire allows mulitple devices to run at 400mbs per second. Slower than usb 2s 480mbs. Problem with USB 2 is that the 480 mbs is shared between devices. If you use alot of usb devices other than keyboard and mouse, this may not be a good idea. If the drive is the only major item you ever intend to run via USB2, it does have better bandwidth. Just keep in mind that if you intend to add another major device like another external drive, Firewire would be better because the bandwidth with be 400 for both devices instead of the 200/200 like USB 2