WD AV-GP drive as recording drive?

[jrandeck]

I’m upgrading my HTPC to a Core i3 2100T and am looking for a better-performing option for my recording drive. 

Currently I have 2 WD green drives (the old EACS model) in a software RAID-0 configuration (striped using Windows drive manager.)  For the most part that works OK, but I get occasional stutter on playback and some breakups in recordings that I wouldn’t expect to see and I suspect that the drives can’t keep up with the load (I’ve seen more issues lately as the drives fill up, time to defrag again.)

I’m thinking about replacing those drives with one WD AV-GP drive (this one in particular: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136783 ) to reduce power consumption and hopefully fix some of the issues.   So, I’ve seen the review of the AV-GP drive on the site here, but I’m wondering how much headroom there ought to be over the test used there.   During primetime in the fall, I’ve had as many as 7 HD channels recording at once (all my tuners engaged) with ShowAnalyzer running (I limit it to 2 shows at a time) and one show playing back.    Will the AV-GP drives handle that?

 

 

[swoon]

Are you using 64KB clusters? If not, it might help your situation a little if you are finding excessive fragmentation degrading your HDD performance.

[jrandeck]

Yep, I use 64 KB clusters an all the drives I record or store video on. 

I’d like to replace my current setup with a single drive if that will work, just to simplify things.  I can’t say for sure that any of the issues I’ve had are related to drive performance, but it would be nice to be able to take that doubt out of the equation.

 

[mikinho]

Give me until Thursday and I can test w/ 12 HDTV channels to see how it does.  Just remind me tomorrow 🙂

[oliverredfox]

[quote=mikinho]

Give me until Thursday and I can test w/ 12 HDTV channels to see how it does.

[/quote]

I’ll be curled up in the corner crying with envy.

[jrandeck]

That sounds like a fund test!   Consider yourself reminded 🙂

I was thinking about testing with just one of the green drives alone when I get a chance (after copying everything off so I can break the array) just to see what happens when I overwhelm one drive.

In theory, the RAID-0 array should be fast enough for what I have, though I’ve heard too many people complain about how slow Windows software RAID is.

[mikinho]

I have 12x recordings going on right now (hard to find 12 HD channels worth recording!).

I have a few perfmons running in the background to ensure the hard drives have  no issues keeping up.  I’ll let you know how it goes!

[swoon]

Make sure to hit the drive up with some simultaneous viewings too!

[swoon]

That sounds like a fund test!   Consider yourself reminded 

I was thinking about testing with just one of the green drives alone when I get a chance (after copying everything off so I can break the array) just to see what happens when I overwhelm one drive.

In theory, the RAID-0 array should be fast enough for what I have, though I’ve heard too many people complain about how slow Windows software RAID is.

You should try it. I did not find the EACS drives acceptable with wtv and Show Analyzer.

[umdivx]

I did 6 HD recordings, (4 cable card, 2 ATSC) Not sure that 1 more HD stream would make a difference. If I recall correctly that I still had plenty of room to spare when 6 recordings at once.

-Josh

[RehabMan]

I’ve had a couple of these AV-GP drives in my HTPC.  The first one was a 500GB drive which seemed to work great.  I recently upgraded it to a 1TB drive and now I notice the occasional stutter.  Is it a problem with the drive or something else?  Was the 500GB drive better or did I just not notice it happening before?  I tend to suspect something else (software) on the PC is causing it…

I’m tempted to start disabling services and background tasks slowly until I don’t see it any more, but it is so rare, I’m not sure I’d ever be sure of the cause/effect (it happens maybe once for every 2 hours playback).

Most of all I wonder if it is the anti-virus software (Microsoft Security Essentials) as I sometimes see it running in the background on my laptops/desktops when I least expect it… and to tell you the truth I question the necessity of running anti-virus on a dedicated WMC machine.  I don’t run anti-virus on my WHS server either and could probably do the same on my HTPC.

Things to try… things to try…

[swoon]

[quote=RehabMan]

I’ve had a couple of these AV-GP drives in my HTPC.  The first one was a 500GB drive which seemed to work great.  I recently upgraded it to a 1TB drive and now I notice the occasional stutter.  Is it a problem with the drive or something else?  Was the 500GB drive better or did I just not notice it happening before?  I tend to suspect something else (software) on the PC is causing it…

I’m tempted to start disabling services and background tasks slowly until I don’t see it any more, but it is so rare, I’m not sure I’d ever be sure of the cause/effect (it happens maybe once for every 2 hours playback).

Most of all I wonder if it is the anti-virus software (Microsoft Security Essentials) as I sometimes see it running in the background on my laptops/desktops when I least expect it… and to tell you the truth I question the necessity of running anti-virus on a dedicated WMC machine.  I don’t run anti-virus on my WHS server either and could probably do the same on my HTPC.

Things to try… things to try…

[/quote]

 

You can still run MSE, just disable the volume from real-time monitoring or *.wtv (assuming you are using Windows 7 Media Center).

[mikinho]

No issues with up to 10x HDTV streams.  With 12x it did start to have some pixelation though that could easily be network packet loss as 8x of the are from network tuners and this system is a low power AMD Zacate (review pending) with a crappy Realtek network card.  Realteak, nForce and Broadcomm network cards are the bane of my existence at the moment.

[mikinho]

btw…. If you add Show Analyzer to the mix it is a very different story.  You won’t be able to recording more 4 and still be able to view Live TV unless you really tweak SA settings.  I can get into that more later if interested.

If you plan to use SA I suggest sticking w/ WD Black drives.

[jrandeck]

Thanks for testing that.  I had a hunch that ShowAnalyzer would mess up the optimizations for recording.  I don’t think ShowAnalyzer fits the drive’s standard use case.

Another option might be to run ShowAnalyzer at off-peak times.  I have a 1 TB WD Black drive.  I’ll probably just use that for my recording drive.

[Author]

Posts