Installing and Configuring Win7 Media Center Start to Finish
My fellow Microsoft Media Center MVP Pete Stagman has a fantastic post (which he insists he will continue updating) which covers a ton of great topics if you’re in the process of installing Windows 7 on your new or old system.
With a stripe set, you have 2 or more Hard Drives acting as if they are a
single drive. In the example below, I have 2 – 500GB Hard Drives acting
like a single 1TB Hard Drive. When the tuners are recording the TV
streams, the controllers will write the data to each drive in "Stripes".
It will write a small amount to drive 1, then a small amount to drive
2, alternating back and forth between the drives. Data can be written to
the drives almost twice as fast as a single drive. If you have more
than 2 drives, the same striping occurs, the drives will be written to
in sequence as fast as the tuners can send the data. The dis-advantage
to a stripe set is that if ANY 1 drive fails, ALL the data on
the stripe set is lost.
Do not allow them to leave
Do not allow them to leave without checking various channels. I’d suggest a mix of high definition, standard definition and local channels. If you subscribe to premium channels make sure to check them. Just because the majority of channels work does not mean the CableCARD was properly configured. Any combination of signal loss, over-amplification, configuration error or a signal filter can cause tuning issues.