What's required for 4 HD streams?

[Nerva]

I have two HD-Homeruns connected to a SageTV WHS, so I want to be capable of recording 4 HD channels while simultaneously playing back to at least one Placeshifter client PC. What combination of RAM, CPU, and HDD's are needed, and will I need RAID?

[QueOnda]

As long as you have multiple disks you won't have a problem in recording. The HDHR will just stream to the hard drive not using cpu cycles.

You might want to have a Gigabit network but I have 2 HDHR with only 100MB network and able to record 4 hd streams at the same time with this fix. If you have your network card as full-duplex then you won't have a problem with viewing.

Memory is always a good thing.

[Nerva]

I'm running Windows Home Server. Athlon64, 1GB RAM, with 4x1TB (WD "Green Power") drives in the server storage pool, and an additional 1TB logical drive that I'm currently using both for SageTV and BitTorrent (and any other downloads). The idea is I want to avoid stressing and/or fragmenting the storage drives, because that's the important stuff, which I don't want to lose -- I use folder duplication on the storage, so I only have 2TB of usable storage FYI.

The needs of SageTV are completely different -- I want speed, size, and I couldn't care less about reliability -- a perfect application for striped RAID. The needs of BitTorrent and other downloads are a bit different as well -- constant small reads/writes but no need for blazing speed or reliability -- the perfect use for sacrificial old drives I want to grind up, while keeping my new 1TB drives fresh.

I used to have 2x160GB logical drives in the server (along with the storage pool) -- one for SageTV, the other for BitTorrent and other downloads. But once I got the 2nd HD-Homerun, there was too much I wanted to record, and I noticed playback was choppy when recording several streams.

I'm not sure yet how well the 1TB drive can handle the strain of 4 streams plus playback.

I also have an unused hardware RAID controller on the mobo. I'm looking into buying a couple cheap old drives off some friends to add to my 2x160GB drives, with the idea of doing a 4-drive RAID array, which would put the old drives to work while also giving me better performance. The main downside to that is the ridiculous amount of power those small drives will use compared to the storage pool.

[ke6guj]

I've recorded 3 HD streams and 4 SD streams to a USB drive, and watched an HD recording at the same time. THat one USB drive was able to keep up with all that with no issues.