[mythtv-users] Question about hard drives

[Bruce Markey]

Jim Foster wrote:

> I am getting closer to creating a dedicated MythTV box, but I have a 
> question about drives.  I have always been taught that faster is better, 

Well, that would be true when speed is the primary consideration.
Smaller is better if size is the main concern, cheaper is better
for budget issues, quieter is better for noise and so on...

> The article, in short, it says that a 5400 RPM drive has more than 
> enough bandwidth to handle up to 5 simultaneous input streams. The 
> advantage then is that the drive runs cooler and quieter as well as uses 
> less power.

If you record at 3.6GB per hour that is 1MB per second. 1GB/hr
files are less than 300KB/sec. Throughput is not the bottleneck,
however, your disk does need to have DMA support so some older
5400rpm disks may not work well.

--  bjm