Show "Hoarders", how much space did you use?

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by reggie14

I see your point, but at the same time you could miss some quality shows that way, too. I mean, it sucks that Firefly, Freaks and Geeks, and Undeclared only lasted half-seasons, but they're still worth watching.

There are a lot of shows like those. Firefly is still one of the best shows EVER *IMHO*.
Then again, even the worst Sci-Fi show is miles ahead of the "best" reality show. (of course using "best" to describe any reality show is like saying "this is the BEST telemarketer I've ever talked to")

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

Then again, even the worst Sci-Fi show is miles ahead of the "best" reality show. (of course using "best" to describe any reality show is like saying "this is the BEST telemarketer I've ever talked to")

+100s if not +1000s.

[Paul H]

Originally Posted by waynedunham

There are a lot of shows like those. Firefly is still one of the best shows EVER *IMHO*.
Then again, even the worst Sci-Fi show is miles ahead of the "best" reality show. (of course using "best" to describe any reality show is like saying "this is the BEST telemarketer I've ever talked to")

So true, good example was Special Unit 2. It had everything; cheesy plots, monsters, beautiful women, fast cars and BIG ASSED GUNS!!!
Unless of course you think that strapping a camera to a Knuckle-dragging/mono-eyebrowed/momma-humper is quaility entertainment!
(END OF RANT)

[KryptoNyte]

The method that I've found best is to cut commercials and then encode the cut file for archiving, basically maintaining the original quality at 1/4 of the disk space (using a solution that is about 90% automated of course). I am selective about which things to record, there really is a lot of crud out there, and let's face it, it's fairly cost effective to find something that you enjoy and just purchase the bluray season(s) on Amazon. The only time I've seen this not work is on shows that have some conflict that makes HD seasons hard to come by, "Cold Case" for example.

In the end, once you consider the time and energy cost to encode that much video vs. the cost of hard drive space, it might be most effective to just leave everything in it's native format after commercials are cut. History tells us that hard disk storage will just get more economical as time passes - unfortunately, I've also found the quality of hard drives to have dropped drastically in the last decade.

[IVB]

Originally Posted by KryptoNyte

ode that much video vs. the cost of hard drive space, it might be most effective to just leave everything in it's native format after commercials are cut. History tells us that hard disk storage will just get more economical as time passes - unfortunately, I've also found the quality of hard drives to have dropped drastically in the last decade.

All true, although i'd really love a set-it-and-forget-it approach. I'd pay $$ to not have to deal.

[waynedunham]

Originally Posted by Wayneb

They must be like SiriusXM, you have to call every year and tell them you are going to cancel service unless they give you a better deal.

I just went through the 5-6 month call to SiriusXM. I'd call up to say I'm cancelling and they would throw a "discount" price at me and I'd say no, and the they'd throw another LOWER price at me. This goes on for several rounds until I finally say "Ok, at what point of me saying NO will you no longer be able to offer me a lower price?"
That price is usually around $25-$30 for 5-6 months of their basic service.

I put very few miles on my vehicle per year (well under 10k), and almost never listen to the radio at home. The only time I'm interested in listening to Sirius is when I'm on a long drive. I go up to visit family and my camp up in Maine every few months and that is about the only time I use it so their normal price (what is it $15 a month now?) is just not worth it to me. But $5-6 a month I can justify to myself for those long trips.
The only major drawback is you have to remember to do this before the term expires or they renew you automatically at full price.

Back on topic....... I have 3TB of space on a WHSv1 machine. On those trips to Maine I have to monitor the machine to make sure it doesn't go bonkers (I use Intelligent Recording) and suddenly start recording crap. I am a watch and delete kind of guy. I have less than 1 page of archived recordings.
Since I am now retired I am spending longer amounts of time up in Maine so I am seriously considering upping my space to make sure I don't run out of space when I'm up there.

[IVB]

holy crap you guys weren't joking. In the 7 days since I got back into bed with SageTV, and BEFORE I EVEN HOOKED UP the comcast, I have 92GB of recordings. 12GB/hour via OTA adds up pretty freaking fast, and once I hook up comcast we'll use that for another 4-5 shows.

I see 3TB Seagate enterprise drives for $200, or 4TB consumer for $220, I see a 12-16TB array in my near future.

[KryptoNyte]

I have found this Seagate 4TB external drive to have a decent 3.5" hard drive inside, and hard to beat for $150 (or less perhaps if you look hard enough). Crack open the enclosure and drop it in your computer.

http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Backup...ds=seagate+4tb

(The 3TB version is, however, a bit faster it seems.)

[IVB]

I'm a little skittish about using regular desktop drives in concert with a hardware based RAID card. I can't recall the technical details, but back when I first got the RocketRaid, it thrashed through 3 of my generic consumer hard disks in a few months, which is when I switched to enterprise. They've been awesome. That 4TB linked above specifically states NAS compatibility, so perhaps whatever the incompatibility is has been resolved there.

[KryptoNyte]

I don't believe I'd trust consumer level drives for RAID anymore. The 4 year old WD 2TB drives that I had in RAID claimed they were ready to go for consumer level RAID. All three of those drives failed. That's right, a 100% failure rate.

[stanger89]

You could try those "new" NAS drives, WD calls them Red, I think there are some other options as well.

[Fuzzy]

I'll be honest. I've looked over so many of the various NAS/RAID/RAIDish solutions, and just have not found a compelling reason to use any of them. I've got 6 drives right now, with recordings and imports spread across them. Performance is great. Sage seamlessly integrates the various locations to one. It all 'just works'.

[IVB]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I'll be honest. I've looked over so many of the various NAS/RAID/RAIDish solutions, and just have not found a compelling reason to use any of them. I've got 6 drives right now, with recordings and imports spread across them. Performance is great. Sage seamlessly integrates the various locations to one. It all 'just works'.

So you've never had a drive fail? Or, you're just not worried about the data loss when one does?

[BobPhoenix]

I do as Fuzzy has for my recording drives. But I have unRAID that I periodically archive to with a hybrid raid solution. You can get the same effect with FlexRaid's tRAID solution as well. By that I mean each drive has a separate file system so that if you have more drives fail than you have parity drives you don't loose all of your data like a traditional hardware raid card. I lost too much data on hardware raid solutions (even when I had enterprise drives) to go back to that.

[mechling-burgh]

I'm like Fuzzy also four drives, which I swap out one or two ever several years and copy off the content to the new drive. I also added a Western Digital Live networked drive that I copy anything like movies or shows that I have recorded for my kids and want to be sure not to loose due to a drive failure. My life would not be ruined if I loose some TV shows since there are options in a pinch to find the couple shows that my wife or kids would have to see.

[Skybolt]

I have to tell you, I had some really bad experiences running RAID 5. I had 8 drives enterprise class seagates and lost 3 within the same 24hrs, I had only two hot spares and was away for a long weekend. I came back to lot's of beeping and lost data. I now only mirror with hot spares, off of my HW RAID controller. I use the same drives across all of my storage. It took some time to make the switch, but it was well worht it. I have 12T mirrored at this point with 3T drives. with plans to add another 12T this winter. One hot sapre per drive cage.

[IVB]

Originally Posted by BobPhoenix

I do as Fuzzy has for my recording drives. But I have unRAID that I periodically archive to with a hybrid raid solution. You can get the same effect with FlexRaid's tRAID solution as well. By that I mean each drive has a separate file system so that if you have more drives fail than you have parity drives you don't loose all of your data like a traditional hardware raid card. I lost too much data on hardware raid solutions (even when I had enterprise drives) to go back to that.

Does Flexraid play well with other apps, or does it need a dedicated machine?

At this point I have a stable machine with the RocketRaid, its my mega-server which runs a ton of stuff. I'm loathe to add anything disruptive to it, and i'm also loathe to move it all to a secondary machine (although that is possible with 2-3 days of focused effort)

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by IVB

Does Flexraid play well with other apps, or does it need a dedicated machine?

At this point I have a stable machine with the RocketRaid, its my mega-server which runs a ton of stuff. I'm loathe to add anything disruptive to it, and i'm also loathe to move it all to a secondary machine (although that is possible with 2-3 days of focused effort)

I have tRAID installed on a VM of Windows 7 Pro 64-bit, which I use for server duties (backups, torrents, FTP, etc). You definitely do not need a dedicated machine.

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by IVB

Does Flexraid play well with other apps, or does it need a dedicated machine?

At this point I have a stable machine with the RocketRaid, its my mega-server which runs a ton of stuff. I'm loathe to add anything disruptive to it, and i'm also loathe to move it all to a secondary machine (although that is possible with 2-3 days of focused effort)

I have not tried tRAID (FlexRaid) yet so I can't say with complete confidence. But I don't believe there will be a problem with other apps. I know Skirge01 is currently testing/using tRAID because of posts on the FlexRaid forums about his performance when SageTV was recording directly to the pool. So he would be the best person to ask about this. If I implement tRAID it will be on my WHS install as I will be migrating to WHS 2011 from WHS v1 in the coming weeks and I want a pooling solution as well as parity protection. I don't anticipate moving off of unRAID for my archive servers any time soon. Especially to another proprietary solution. But there just aren't any open source parity solutions that have a good real time parity setup - that I've heard of anyway.

Also note I am wavering a little as I might just setup unRAID on my N54L and create a virtual VM for WHSv1 for backups only. I may have to do it that way simply because it is easier for me to configure unRAID then it is 2011 and tRAID. But I'm going to try 2011 first. It will make better use of the 8GB of memory I've installed and the 250GB 7200rpm laptop drive I ordered.

Edit: See Skirge01 beat me to it.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by IVB

So you've never had a drive fail? Or, you're just not worried about the data loss when one does?

In the 9 years i've been using sage, I've had one drive fail - so i lost some recordings - the ones I cared about were easily replaced through other sources.

I run my drives 24/7, they are in a cooled 4 in 3 rack with all filtered air. I did run windows XP's hacked in RAID 5 back when I started, with 4 200GB drives - but that was a LONG time ago, and those drives were retired due to space long before they would have been retired due to age. Upgrading to windows 7 eliminated the built-in RAID-5 capability, but it never really bothered me.