upgrading with 500g Maxtor L01R500 ?

Have you considered using DVArchive to solve your storage problem?

I bought a 500 gb seagate and it works fine. The new maxtors may work, and you can always put it in a computer if it doesn't work in the replay.
(I bought 2 identical 300 gig diamondmax 10's when they first came out and they did not work for me, but I have heard of some that did work)

Do you have more than one ReplayTV?
If so there will be a serious problem seeing the 500 gig 5XXX's guide remotely.

I don't think there are any flags up. There's no particular reason a 500 gig maxtor wouldn't work. Occasionally there is a model from this brand or that brand that gives trouble. The bottom line is you'll have to just put it in and try. If you do, pls report back the results either way so others know.

With that said, loading a guide from a remote replaytv can be a problem with big drives. The bottleneck is related to the number of shows you have recorded, not the drive size itself. Larger drives, of course tend to have a larger number of shows on them. One way to deal with this is to record everything in high quality.

People will chime in. I'm fuzzy on the number of shows(limit) that isn't problematic, 140 perhaps?

500 gigs recorded all at high would be 166 hour shows.

The "number of shows" bottleneck was recently dicussed in this thread announcing the latest version of DVArchive: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...=698267&page=2

What's true for an instance of DVA is generally true also for any individual Replay unit. Performance starts to suffer with as few as 80 shows and, in my opinion, drops off appreciably after 150 shows. Beyond 500 shows and you could force an error reboot of your Replay when trying to load the remote show data.

500 GB, in my opinion, is really not suitable for a Replay drive. It is much easier and secure to store that much video on your PC using DVA. Large drives get mussed in my experience and you would lose an awful lot of data if you had to re-image. This just doesn't happen with DVA and even if it did it is very easy to backup storage on your PC.

Dave,

DVArchive is just as easy (if not easier) to access/share as any other networked Replay. Did you know you can run multiple instances of DVArchive on a single PC, allowing you to create themed libraries of archived shows? The most recent version of DVArchvie (3.2, released last month) uses less memory, and seems to perform even better.

If it were my 500MB drive, I'd run 3~4 DVArchive LAN servers using the same physical drive (just different storage directories). Then setup some "tasks" to offload shows from your 300GB drive automagically at 3:00 am every day. Your storage problems are solved, and the performance will be great.

What I could never figure out is if this number applies to one unit on the network or if it applies to the combined number of shows of all units on the network. For example, if I have 6 RTV's and 2 DVArchive servers with hundreds of shows, will I have problems?

Cheers

From everything that's been posted, the limit applies on a per unit basis. You can avoid problems, for example, by running more than one instance of DVA or by spreading your library over multiple Replays. So to answer your question Smooth, yes and no. As long as you limit yourself to reasonable numbers on each storage instance you're likely to have no problems. Overloading any single instance will likely create problems even when accessed from another device.

I don't understand this constant "load up DVArchive" instead of your Replays because they are slow. All my Replays have 300gig drive. My PC with DVArchive is very fast unit with 6 drives. My Replays can have 50-60 shows at any one time during peak seasons. My DVA server has had a max of 50-60. When cycling through the guides, the Replays update in 1-2 seconds or less. Once they update you can arrow down the show list rapidly. The DVA server on the other hand is dramatically slower. Each arrow down command on the channel list takes a second or 2. The number of shows on the DVA server seems not to matter. It is the same speed whether there are 30 shows or 60.

I don't know if I would call any PC with 6 drives a "very fast unit"... How are these drives mounted?

If you only have 50 or 60 shows on DVA, you probably barely need 1 drive, let alone 5 or 6. Which drive are your shows stored on? What other services are you running on this PC? Have you diabled all power saving measures (save those for your monitor)? I don't have this lag at all, even with about 90 shows.

Machine is a Athlon dual core 4400 with 2x1meg L2. Boot drive and paging/'scratch drive are WD SATA Raptors, dual DVD burners, 2 SATA 3.0 300 and 400g Seagates, 2 Seagate 300g ATA150 in removable cages, 2 gig Corsair DDR. It is not used solely for DVA, but DVA and Poopli are the only 2 apps running constantly.

Which drives are the shows stored on?

One of the ATA150 removables.

Hmmm... and your DVArchive.XML file is (presumably) in your local profile?

Try this... Try moving one show to your C drive (you have to setup that directory within DVA) and then put that show in a special channel on DVA. Then hide all your other channels.

See if this doesn't make a difference.

Maybe there is some sort of lag associated with the removeable cage.

Let one of your Replays load up with about 300+ recordings, and you will understand the problem. Most folks who are looking to install a 500GB drive inside a Replay will not be able to exhibit the restraint you have shown. Their expectation is typically based upon having lived with a 40GB, 80GB, or 160GB drive, and they think having one huge drive will make life wonderful. The 2 seconds delay to load a DVA server guide you are suffering through would seem like a blessing if you ever saw the 20~30 second delay caused by a networked Replay with too many shows.

I have 5 5Ks. I record anything that interests me and a lot of things interest me, LOL. I watch shows with no story arc relatively quickly. Shows which follow an arc (Veronica Mars, LOST), I'll record the entire season before watching. I leave everything on the drive for requests on Poopli.

The DVA behavior is not new, it has been the same with many incarnations of my computer and its drives. It was no slower with a 3200+ 64 than it is now. I may have exaggerated slightly, but arrow down on the Replays goes bink,bink,bink and the DVA server gives bink...,bink....,bink...., which can be annoying. You hit the remote several times and overshoot. Then you have to wait for it to stop, then up arrow to what you want.

[If I remember right] The ~100 show listing limit is per a catagory, not a ReplayTV. Few want to deal with catagories because of the manual labor required moving over shows and deal with thinking about catagory names.

Considering catagories are a here-to-stay viable solution, and 500+ gig hard drives are here to stay as well, I came up with this zenish solution:

Make 4 catagories: Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring
At the beginning of each season change the 'default catagory' that the ReplayTV records to (found in settings) to the new season.

It would keep the guide snappy, particularly at the beginning of each season (nice). The older stuff isn't always in your face haunting you. If a whole year goes by to the next summer and the summer catagory still has old junk from last summer in it.. it's good timing.. intuitive to a spring cleaning. Maybe there's room for one more catagory 'Ancient shows' you could dump the year old ones you can't bear to delete. It will cost you though. To keep them you will have to manually move each show to the 'Ancient shows' catagory. That will make you a bit more liberal about which you delete.

It's Good TV Feng Shui!

So 'cow, I'm curious...
Do you have seven pairs of underwear? Monday, Tuesday, Wedensday....
OR
Twelve pairs? January, February, March ....

I'm thinking he has 4 pairs - Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring - an idea that good has been used before he thought of applying it to TV!

Here in TX you can get by with just 3--it is too hot in the summer, if you get my meaning.

It's summer and she's from Texas
http://rubyurl.com/fZA

I think Y'all should watch it.

More germaine is the fact that categories don't help at all... the issue is the total number of programs regardless of category.

i'll take your word for it; ah bummer, I was afraid of that. All I remember messin with catagory strategies and putting old shows in one catagory..I remember loathing that tab. I had tooo many shows in it and it took forever.

Actually, I'd appreciate it if someone tested that out (I don't have any replaytvs hooked up right now).

Plyons may have falsely concluded that because his 'default' catagory was fullest and first to load up when the guide is remotely accessed.

It was a good 1.5 years ago when I was messing around with catagories, use them sparsely. I thought I was doing the catagories tests to figure out it was a way around long show lists. Don't remember the conclusion.

If you test be sure the catagory that comes up first only has few shows in it.

The categorys do help, but when you go to the 'all' category accidentally, that's when things go wrong. I have too many shows on a 500 gig replay and I just have to be carefull. I have to pause whatever I am watching before I try to use the channel guide and switch to the next replay. And when I do look at the other replay guide, it will put a skip in whatever is recording at the time.

That's right. I made two extra blank catagories and put them on either side of the 'all' catagory. One was DontgoL[eft] and the other was DontgoR. heh.

All shows is the total (but received) and the first to load, so that's the whole point. I haven't tested exhaustively, but I never found a way to default to anything but All shows on loading a fresh cache. That means keeping All shows under 100 even though I record to categories.

So I agree with plyons10 (until someone proves otherwise) and I agree with nded re Seasonal Bovine UdderWear... tho I'd prefer no proof on that or otherwise.

'cow the proper expression is "all y'all" not "y'all" Of course, I can't exactly hold it against you, being that you're from Southern California, as was I, and this isn't exactly something that we would pickup from the local dialect, so until someone from Lousiana took the time to explain, I didn't know either...