Possible to record over shared drive?

[White94Cobra]

I recently assembled a HTPC and moved SageTV from my main box to the new one in the living room. I have 320 gigs of storage in the HTPC, but I have 400 gigs in my main PC that was previously dedicated to SageTV. Is it possible to map a shared drive from my main PC to the HTPC and use that as recording space? Right now I have a 100Mbps router, but am considering getting a Gigabit switch if it would work. That could potentially give me over 700 gigs of recording space.... time for a third tuner!

[jmeeks]

Yes. The 100 Mb network would suffice for your system with no problem. To go gigabit, you would need mopre than a switch though. But you probably already know that. But Gigabit isn't really necessary.

I don't think you even have to have it mapped on your HTPC. Just have the drive(s) on your main PC shared. SageTV will browse right accross the network.

[White94Cobra]

Thanks... I was thinking that for recording one show, the 100 Mb would be sufficient, but recording two shows might stretch it a bit (if I'm streaming a movie over the network for example). I already have gigabit ports on both of my PC's, so I think all I'd need is the switch. I could hook the switch to my router to keep Internet access.

[rotaryracer]

What are the odds I could do this on a wireless 54G network? I'm thinking about setting up a media center in the basement and fishing CAT5 up to the HTPC may or may not be possible. I have a 54G wireless network running right now and the one PC that's wireless has consistently had a great connection (very good to excellent and 54MBPS rates).

Thanks!

Jason

[jmeeks]

The cards (PVR250, 350) max encoding bandwidth requirement/capability is 12Mbps. Handling a couple cards should be no issue, and a couple of cards definitely won't saturate the Bandwidth on a 100 Mb network.

[Narflex]

54G will do fine also, haven't heard of anyone saturating the bandwidth on that with SageTV yet (even with multiple tuners and multiple clients)

[cryptAWD]

Yes, it will work fine. I can easily record 2 shows and watch 2 more at the same time over 100mbit connection to my shared drive on the server.

HOWEVER, be prepared for SageTV to lose all of your recordings if your server ever goes down for ANY REASON! This is an ongoing problem that I mentioned during the beta period that nobody has acknowledged, let alone fixed. Good luck to you in finding a server with 100% uptime, it's just not going to happen.

[Narflex]

If this happens you should just be able to:
1. quit SageTV
2. move the files back into the video directory if they got moved into the errant directory
3. restart SageTV
4. SageTV will recognize the files on import and put them back into the SageRecordings, as long as it hasn't done an EPG update since it lost them (which occur every 24 hours).