Recording 2 shows, same time, to a file server

[steingra]

Hello
I have setup a file server on my 100 Mbps network. The DELL file server currently has two 250GB drives, each one has a Windows Network share on it. They are both on the same ide channel. 7200 rpm drives. Formatted 64K block size. Also using the 80 pin connectors on it. The server is a 2.4 Ghz based Intel CPU. Plenty of RAM. NOt that it really matters in this case...

I pointed SageTV at each share as another video recording directory.

It looks like the first two shows were both recorded into the two different shares. One went into \\server\video1 and the other into \\server\video2

But my main question is do you think this configuration will be ok? By that I mean specifically having 2 drives on the same IDE channel on the dell server, and recording at the same time.

The main OS is on a chhetah SCSI/160 drive. So is the sawp file. So basically I am just going to keep adding a bunch of hard drives into this machine for more recording space. And keep OS on its own fast drive. I was hoping the competition for the IDE channel wouldnt muck up the simultaneous recordings.

Thanks for any input on this.

[deria]

I think your larger problem is going to be network bandwidth. 100mb/s is reasonably fast, but video files use a lot of bandwidth. I think your more likely to see network bandwidth issues than IDE-bus issues. Unless you have a really weak IDE controller, though, you should be ok on the IDE bus bandwidth front. I record four shows simultaneously to two hard drives in my machine that are all on the same IDE-cable and I don't have any problems.

[paulbeers]

If you are recording directly to the drives, there shouldn't be a bandwith issue because the amount of info transferred per second is small. As far as your question about it putting shows on different drives, I don't see a problem with that. As long as sage recognizes the shows on both drives, I don't see any problem what so ever.

[cmaffia]

I have a similar setup as the author and I do not have a problem at all recording or watching. Even better is that one of my clients is a wireless MVP extender and I do not have any bandwidth problems whatsoever.

Originally Posted by paulbeers

If you are recording directly to the drives, there shouldn't be a bandwith issue because the amount of info transferred per second is small. As far as your question about it putting shows on different drives, I don't see a problem with that. As long as sage recognizes the shows on both drives, I don't see any problem what so ever.

[steingra]

From my ealier testing, I believe SageTV was using about 4Mbps to playback a DVD Best Quality show, from a sagetv Client Across the 100 Mbps network.

But I havent had time to run tests, during the recording of one or more shows across the network to the file server. So I am curious how much network bandwidth is actually being consumed when Sagetv is recording the tvshows *across the network* ....hmmmmmm

So it seems like, if I were to have problems it would be on the network side, and not sharing the IDE channel for 2 drives, and recording to both of them simultaneous.

I plan on adding 2 more drives on the 2nd IDE channel, and doing same to one or more IDE ata133 add in cards. But I needed to be sure this first one was going to be OK recording 1 or 2 shows (and at same time) AND also allow 1 or 2 clients to play back across the network.

If needed I could upgrade to 1GB switches...since they are cheap now. but dont want to spend the dough if not needed.

Thanks