Quote:
Originally Posted by qz3fwd /forum/post/19519887
You should record to a non-OS hard drive (ie 2nd hard drive). If you need to playback content at the same time as recording then youll want fast processor, fast hard drive. If you record to your OS disk, then paging and other drive activity can cause buffer problems and therefore lost data in the stream, especially as you fill up the hard drive your machine will come to its knees.
I have an older HTPC system with one parallel IDE (ATA 100) 7200RPM hard disk for OS/programs, and 2 additional parallel IDE (ATA 100) 7200RPM hard disks for ATSC recording. I believe all the HDDs each have either 8MB or 16MB of cache.
ATM, I only have 2 tuners, and each one has a dedicated recording drive. If I were to add 1 or 2 more tuners, could I record 2 shows simultaneously to *one* hard drive without losing any data?
I ask this because I know from experience that certain types of drive accesses can cause recording problems. For example, I learned the hard way that you should never do a copy/paste or cut/paste operation on a HDD while it is recording from an ATSC tuner. Once I accidentally initiated such an operation not realizing that a recording was in progress, and heard the HDD heads thrashing about. I aborted after several seconds, but it was too late... several seconds of my recording were totally screwed up as a result
OTOH, I have also successfully watched a program while it was being recorded (i.e. timeshifting) without any detrimental effects on the recording.
So to sum up my experiences with simulaneous disk operations during recording:
1. Copy/paste or cut/paste = BAD
2. Watching file while it is being written to disk = OKAY
Of course I realize that my HDDs are not very fast, so other folks with newer, higher speed/bandwidth drives (i.e. SATA 300 or even SATA 600) may not have the problem I had.
So given my recording drive specs above, could I record 2 shows at once to a single HDD? Thanks!