[mythtv-users] Hard Drive (How Big?)

[Ray Olszewski]

At 02:06 PM 10/5/2003 -0700, James Colannino wrote:
>Hey everyone.  I was just wondering, if I plan on storing a significant 
>amount of high-quality recordings on MythTV, how big of a HD would you 
>recommend?  120GB?  200GB?  Perhaps 300GB?

This sort of question has no real answer, aside from the suggestion that 
you quantify (for yourself, not us) "significant amount" and "high 
quality", then do the math. Though you do need some space for the OS and 
Myth itself, in this sort of calculation, you can neglect it.

Prices right now seem good on drives in the 120 GB to 250 GB range, with 
much higher (per GB) prices for 300 GB and (rarely) larger. That would 
drive my decision, along with the realization that adding another drive 
when the one you have gets full is no real difficulty.

Just as a reference point, I have 2 servers I keep video on, and they have 
a combined 600 GB of disk space (on 5 physical drives, mostly purchased 
last year or early this year) available for video storage, with about 400 
GB of actual stored video. That's a quantity I've accumulated in about 18 
months, though it is mostly at a lower quality (and smaller size) than 
Myth's default MPEG4 settings.

Were I buying a new drive for use here, I would only look at the current 
220 and 250 GB drives, unless I needed to take into consideration the 
inability of some BIOSes to access disks over (I think) 135 GB ... though 
this is an issue, if at all, only for your boot drive ... in which case I'd 
consider a 120. But that's just me; YMMV.