Rebuilding server: SSD or normal HD drive?

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by drewg

Once I updated the firmware, everything seemed to go back to normal. But I've never had that sort of thing happen with a rotational disk.

You didn't have a Seagate 1.5TB drive then.

Firmware bugs are possible on just about everything. The crucial bug is the ONLY one that drive has had. Sucks that it you had to deal with it. The m4 and the samsung 830 are the two highest recommended SSD's out there because of speed/quality. Intel is right up there in quality, but not so much with speed. Not to say the intel drives aren't fast (the ones with their controller).

Lots of choices out there, and some have issues that others don't. I've had my little kingston ssd for close to 3 years and have yet to have a single issue...other than it is too small.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

You didn't have a Seagate 1.5TB drive then.

Firmware bugs are possible on just about everything. The crucial bug is the ONLY one that drive has had. Sucks that it you had to deal with it.

Yeah, I heard about the Seagate from a co-worker who worked for some embedded appliance company in his previous job. They had the same sort of bug, where drives started failing after 6mo of uptime.

I guess I'm just lucky!

Drew

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by drewg

Yeah, I heard about the Seagate from a co-worker who worked for some embedded appliance company in his previous job. They had the same sort of bug, where drives started failing after 6mo of uptime.

I guess I'm just lucky!

Drew

Yeah, that really hurt their reputation. Lets hope they use some of the Samsung patents they got when they acquired their HDD division.

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

This method doesn't speed up boot times (irrelevant for a 24-hour system), but it is considerably FASTER than an SSD for runtime operation.

As correctly pointed out from Fuzzy here, the SageTV server is normally a 24/7 one so the boot up speed is not relevant, however what you really want to speed up is the fanart caching which will definitively improve the scrolling speed on extenders, so this is what I would do that hopefully will do the trick (I haven't tried myself, but it should work):

- Leave the fanart directory where it is, so that you can still generate the fanart with your BMT.
- Everytime you change the fanart you just need to create a "fanart.iso" of the fanart directory (dead easy with ImgBurn).
- Mount the "fanart.iso" with "VirtualCloneDrive".
- Change the SageTV fanart setting to point to the virtual clone drive.

Et voila' you've got your fanart in a "RamDisk" without spending a penny and without wasting system memory as the size of the RamDisk is the size of the Fanart.iso (maybe a little bit more).

You can even setup the VirtualClone drive to automount the "Fanart.iso" in case you need to power cycle the server...

Just some food for thoughts.

Eddy

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by routerunner

As correctly pointed out from Fuzzy here, the SageTV server is normally a 24/7 one so the boot up speed is not relevant, however what you really want to speed up is the fanart caching which will definitively improve the scrolling speed on extenders, so this is what I would do that hopefully will do the trick (I haven't tried myself, but it should work):

- Leave the fanart directory where it is, so that you can still generate the fanart with your BMT.
- Everytime you change the fanart you just need to create a "fanart.iso" of the fanart directory (dead easy with ImgBurn).
- Mount the "fanart.iso" with "VirtualCloneDrive".
- Change the SageTV fanart setting to point to the virtual clone drive.

Et voila' you've got your fanart in a "RamDisk" without spending a penny and without wasting system memory as the size of the RamDisk is the size of the Fanart.iso (maybe a little bit more).

You can even setup the VirtualClone drive to automount the "Fanart.iso" in case you need to power cycle the server...

Just some food for thoughts.

Eddy

I don't think that VirtualCloneDrive mounts the ISO as a ramdisk. I wouldn't think that mounting an ISO image would be any faster than the drive it's located on.

For example, if you have a 1GB ISO of an application such as Microsoft Visio, which I do. Mount that using a drive emulator, which I do. It shouldn't cache the whole ISO in RAM, that's kind of wasteful. Reading it directly from the drive would make the most sense.

The only way you could possibly be able to use it as a ramdisk is to somehow get the ISO permanently cached.

It would be a much simpler proposition to have your fanart on an SSD since then BMT could actually write to it.

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

It would be a much simpler proposition to have your fanart on an SSD since then BMT could actually write to it.

Yes, you probably right, is just I found ridiculous paying $80 dollars for a RamDisk software...however with the same amount of money you can buy a decent small SSD for the fanart, safer option as well...also the VirtualClone does a fair amount of caching, but not the whole file size...

EDIT: You can use OSFMount that mount your iso into RAM...need investigation, maybe is not such a bad idea

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by routerunner

Yes, you probably right, is just I found ridiculous paying $80 dollars for a RamDisk software...however with the same amount of money you can buy a decent small SSD for the fanart, safer option as well...also the VirtualClone does a fair amount of caching, but not the whole file size...

EDIT: You can use OSFMount that mount your iso into RAM...need investigation, maybe is not such a bad idea

Yes, I can confirm that OSFMount does mount your ISO entirely in RAM (via setting) making the ISO effectively a RamDisk...

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by routerunner

Yes, I can confirm that OSFMount does mount your ISO entirely in RAM (via setting) making the ISO effectively a RamDisk...

OK, this is getting exciting....with OSFMount you can create a R/W RamDisk of any size into RAM, so to even simplify the process you can just copy your fanart into RAM at startup and point fanart directory to there...

I'm definitively suggesting to checkout OSFMount as it looks like very interesting indeed.

[KeithAbbott]

Originally Posted by routerunner

OK, this is getting exciting....with OSFMount you can create a R/W RamDisk of any size into RAM, so to even simply the process you can just copy your fanart into RAM at startup and point fanart directory to there...

I'm definitively suggesting to checkout OSFMount as it looks like very interesting indeed.

As an added bonus, it looks like it is easily made portable:

http://www.portablefreeware.com/index.php?id=2056

[routerunner]

I do apologize, but I just realised that I literately, brutally hijacked this thread!

This discussion should continue into fanart thread really...sorry IVB

[panteragstk]

Nno hijack. You were on topic...just a bit of an alternate direction.

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by routerunner

OK, this is getting exciting....with OSFMount you can create a R/W RamDisk of any size into RAM, so to even simplify the process you can just copy your fanart into RAM at startup and point fanart directory to there...

I'm definitively suggesting to checkout OSFMount as it looks like very interesting indeed.

I've done it on my server and as first impression is working pretty well, I'll open a new thread with some more info and files to download to help people doing it if they wish.

Eddy

[routerunner]

Originally Posted by routerunner

I've done it on my server and as first impression is working pretty well, I'll open a new thread with some more info and files to download to help people doing it if they wish.

Eddy

I created a new thread regarding Fanart caching here