Secondary Hard Drive Help RPM, Cache What matters most?

[Trapper02]

Been search all over here and google and still can't come up with a definitive answer but here is what i gathered.

Need to upgrade to a bigger hard drive the old 500GB just isnt cutting it anymore. I dont have room for 3.5 Drives has to be 2.5. Looking at 1TB.

RPM: Should i go 7200RPM or is 5400RPM fine? From what i have gathered it sounds like 5400RPM is good enough for a storage drive to just have WMC write and read recorded TV. Is there a benefit if any to going to 7200RPM?

Cache: 64MB in a 2.5 drive is a little pricey. So i though i'd settle in at 32MB.

Here is the drive I am currently looking at
Hitachi GST Travelstar 0S03563 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822145875

Whats main concern RPM, Cache? to keep the HTPC running smooth and fast? Am i over thinking my recorded tv storage Hard Drive?

I dont mind spending more for better performance, but sometimes i know there's a point where you wont see things get any better. So hoping you guys can point me in the right direction.

Also if i decide to leave the 500GB in with the 1TB and make windows do a "JBOD" and combine them will i loose the performance of the better hard drive?

HTPC Specs
CPU: Intel 2.8GHz Dual Core
Ram: 4GB
Main Hard Drive OS: 40GB SSD
2nd Hard Drive: 500GB 2.5" Laptop Drive
MOBO: ZOTAC nvidia 9300

Thank you for the help!

[barnabas1969]

Any modern hard drive will work just fine for Media Center. There's no good reason to go with 7200 RPM, unless you get a bargain on the drive.

JBOD won't hurt your performance of the new drive.

[foxwood]

Am i over thinking my recorded tv storage Hard Drive?

Pretty much. Sure, they're big files, but you're not reading them at full tilt - 6GB/hour is only about 13Mb/s. And rotational speed makes more of a difference for random access, and that's not usally a major concern for recorded TV.

Of course, if you have 6 tuners recording 6 different shows, and 5 Extenders playing back 5 different shows at the same time, you probably do need a faster drive.....

One thing to bear in mind is that low power "green" drives typically have lower rotational speeds. Even if you're not concerned about the power usage, a faster drive may get hotter, and your post implies you don't have a lot of room in the case, so a cooler drive may be more important than a fast drive.

[Trapper02]

Nice thank you for the responses!

I have the 4 tuner card in mine. And two extenders. 2 people watching at the same time is the most thats going on, for now.

So i'll quit pulling my hair out over hard drive specs. ha

[barnabas1969]

Of course, if you have 6 tuners recording 6 different shows, and 5 Extenders playing back 5 different shows at the same time, you probably do need a faster drive.....

Not really. See my post here:
http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 221#p57221

That's on a "green" drive.

I was able to record 6 shows simultaneously from my PRIME tuners. With 6 recordings going, the disk queue length on the HDD was less than 0.05.

[Trapper02]

Nice

i looked at the green laptop 2.5 drives apparently its a newegg typo they say 64MB but reviews state there only 8MB in the 2.5 size... i just can't buy a Hard Drive at 8MB cache ha

[barnabas1969]

To be honest, I don't know if the cache will make that much difference. The drive I bought for my new build, and the drives in my old HTPC all have 64MB cache. I suppose if you were recording a bunch of stuff while you were watching other stuff, the buffer might come into play for buffering the recordings. An 8MB buffer is probably enough. That's big enough to buffer one recording for almost 4 seconds, or four recordings for almost a full second. A second is an eternity on a computer. Plenty of time for the HDD to grab the next few blocks of whatever you're currently watching and write the buffer to disk.

[Trapper02]

I like my small compact HTPC but I hate the limitations. Only one PCi-e, 2 ram slots, having to use 2.5 drives.

This case has been great on keeping things cool in a tight spot, nice to see they still sell it.
Antec Cold Rolled Steel!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811129080

Having a NAS helps though to store my non recorded library.

The Little guy keeps on ticking I built it in Feb 2010. But it will be fun to start from scratch and build a new powerhouse with what i know now and what i have learned over the years.

[Mike88]

Of course, if you have 6 tuners recording 6 different shows, and 5 Extenders playing back 5 different shows at the same time, you probably do need a faster drive.....

Not really. See my post here:
http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 221#p57221

That's on a "green" drive.

I was able to record 6 shows simultaneously from my PRIME tuners. With 6 recordings going, the disk queue length on the HDD was less than 0.05.

Where do I look to find the disk queue length?

I did some searching & saw mention of Ave Queue Length, Ave Read Queue Length, Ave Write Queue Length, and also Current Disk Queue Length.

In my PC’s Resource Monitor there is a section called Storage > Logical Disk > Disk Queue Length: Ave disk queue length.
I also opened up Performance Monitor & saw System Summary > Physical Disk > Ave Disk Queue Length.

Am I looking to see the data for the Ave Disk Queue Length?
If so, do the Resource Monitor & Performance Monitors show the same data for Ave Disk Queue Length?
Or should I be looking somewhere else?

Any guidance would be appreciated.
Thanks.

[barnabas1969]

@Mike88: You're looking in the right place. The Avg Queue Length is the combination of avg read and write queue lengths. Both the Resource Monitor and Performance Monitor show you the same information for the queue length. Use whichever one you like. With Performance Monitor, you can customize the view.

The avg disk queue length should never exceed 1.0. Any number above 1.0 indicates a disk bottleneck.

[Mike88]

Thanks!

[shortcut3d]

I just replaced eight HGST 2.5" 1TB 7200RPM drives in my DS1813+ NAS. I went with eight 4TB Seagate NAS drives. Althought slower rotational speed they are definitely way faster than the 2.5" drives (easily maxes gigabit link vs 90MB/s w/ 2.5"). In the past I preferred 2.5" drives for silent and cool operation. The Seagate NAS drives are fairly power efficient, but still consume double the watts. Airflow is further restricted in the NAS so temps are up 6C even though the drives have slower rotational speed. The Seagate NAS drives are audible when up close, unlike the silent 2.5".