Changing Location for \ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome

[marvin-miller]

Hi Folks!

I'm running Media Center on Windows 7 and it's fairly sluggish. Typically what I see is extensive disk I/O on the ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome directory.

I suspect this is because of the volume of recordings and history etc. I have about 13 Terabytes of recordings and it's not uncommon for the DVR to record 6-10 hours per day. At present, I have +/- 480 future recordings scheduled.

There are several disk arrays in the system, all fairly speedy, yet still, it seems that disk access slows the system down and it's always coming back to the ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome directory.

I'm looking at ways to bring the system speed back up to par and to that end I was thinking of getting a dedicated SSD specifically for the ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome directory.

So the question is, can I can adjust the location of the ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome (perhaps through the registry) and move it off to a dedicated SSD ?

[mjktg99]

Symbolic links. I use 1 ehome directory for 3 PCS on my network so that the Movie Metadata works correctly. I share it out from my HTPS which also stores all of my media.

I used the Command Prompt Method.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/co ... -or-linux/

[holidayboy]

If it's raw performance you're after then you can also look at setting up a "ramdisk" with some spare memory. Much quicker than an SSD.
I used to use one for my live TV buffer and ehome folder(s).

There's a wiki somewhere, I'll try to find it.

[hooraah]

Hi Folks!

I'm running Media Center on Windows 7 and it's fairly sluggish. Typically what I see is extensive disk I/O on the ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome directory.

Rather than start my own thread on the topic, I figured I'd bump this older one.

I, like many others, notice sluggishness in media center on some of my older machines (I have many WMC setups with varying hardware), typically the ones with older and slower hard drives. All of my WMC machines are running hard drives, although I do have SSDs in my laptops and main systems.

Anyway, I'm curious. The OP may never see this, but how do you suppose one might narrow down the extensive disk I/O to a specific directory? Is that somethign that can be viewed with a built-in windows tool, or a good third party program be something to use for this?

Second - while I suppose I could get SSDs for my WMC boxes and be done, I have many in circulation, and while most are hobbled together from older parts, they're usually maxed out on RAM which they've absorbed from their fallen brothers. So, with 8GB of RAM (of which 1-1.5GB is being used), I fail to see the need to purchase an SSD when the offending files should just be loaded into memory.

I've been reading about doing this with a ramdisk, but it seems most people give up on that idea, or at the very least I have not found anyone that specifically says that they've done it and that it helps.

[mercalia]

the only thing i considered trying was putting the live tv buffer in a ramdisk - but need too much memory. mine is a pentium dual core 2 duo 2.5 ghz with 4gb memory on a G41 chipset mb. is sluggish at times. ive learnt to live with it

[richard1980]

how do you suppose one might narrow down the extensive disk I/O to a specific directory? Is that somethign that can be viewed with a built-in windows tool

Use Resource Monitor. It's built into Windows.

Second - while I suppose I could get SSDs for my WMC boxes and be done, I have many in circulation, and while most are hobbled together from older parts, they're usually maxed out on RAM which they've absorbed from their fallen brothers. So, with 8GB of RAM (of which 1-1.5GB is being used), I fail to see the need to purchase an SSD when the offending files should just be loaded into memory.

I've been reading about doing this with a ramdisk, but it seems most people give up on that idea, or at the very least I have not found anyone that specifically says that they've done it and that it helps.

Though I have never personally tried this, I have seen posts where other people have successfully tried it. I do not know how it will impact performance, but it's fairly easy to test. Just stop all eHome services, create the RAM disk, copy the files to the RAM disk, delete the source folder, and create a junction in place of the source folder.

[holidayboy]

The only reason I stopped using a ramdisk was that a power cut caused my MC database to become corrupted.

If I'd had a UPS connected then I'd probably have kept using the ramdisk - it made a big difference.

[richard1980]

Were you saving the contents of the RAM drive periodically? If so, why couldn't you just restore the contents of the RAM drive with the latest image? I know WMC does some funky stuff with the database, but surely there must be some way to relocate the database safely.

[holidayboy]

Yes, there was an auto save option, as well as save on shutdown.

I manually copied files back to get up and running again but it took a while. I was using several ram drives in order to speed up the music and movie library as well.

SSD prices were falling to within my price range at the time and that also factored in my decision if I'm being totally honest

[marvin-miller]

Symbolic links. I use 1 ehome directory for 3 PCS on my network so that the Movie Metadata works correctly. I share it out from my HTPS which also stores all of my media.

I used the Command Prompt Method.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/co ... -or-linux/

As you can probably see...it takes me a bit of time to do things

So today I installed a 40 GB SSD and followed your steps with a bit of a twist, I used Directory Linker (a free app) to do it for me. Very easy stuff, just open the app, pick the eHome directory and in the box below, pick the destination and it even moves all the data from eHome to the SSD - bang - done!

This worked out really well, thanks very much for the tip! The guide is much faster, my +/-600 Movie directory is much faster, it's all much more manageable. I was going to run two 40 GB SSD's in a RAID 0 array to make it really fly but I found that I only had one SATA port left If I outgrow the SSD solution then I will happily create a RAM disk as the DVR is connected to a UPS with about 8 hours of run-time...

Anyway, thanks again!