RAID Setup Benefits

[shred444]

Hey guys, so im getting some stuttering issues on my new HTPC. It happens when timeshifting is turned on or when im recording...so im assuming its coming from the hard drive.

the HD is a 300gb Maxtor 7200rpm. I have both windows and my recordings stored on there. It is not partitioned

i can see the hd light blink on and off repeating in equal incriminents, until the video freezes and stutters. then the HD goes nuts trying to write everything down.

How can i fix this problem? Will partitioning it help? putting windows on a 10gb section, and the rest for movies? what about getting a second hd? or what about raiding them?

striping would allow me to record to both harddrives twice as fast....

[Efros]

Are you doing anything else, like torrenting or something else that accesses the disk repeatedly?

Some info on your Mobo, TV card, drive interface etc may help.

[ASiDiE]

I would make sure your HD is defraged. I would also check to make sure your drive is at the running at ATA 133 if you have support for that.

[wewe]

how you know that the disk is the problem? I wouldn' think so ...

My experience is that with MP there are 1000 reasons for stuttering: codec problem, EPG problem, problem with Wheatheroverlay.xml, ....

When exactly does that happen? In fullscreen TV?

thanks+regards
WeWe

[shred444]

hey guys, thanks for all the comments. heres some more specs on the system


amd 3200+
gigabyte k8 triton
maxtor 300gb 7200rpm SATA hd
nvidia fx5200 video card
Hauppage mce500
windows xp pro

The 300gb SATA drive is new, and only has about 100gigs used. i have not defraged it yet.

i am not doing anything else while running mediaportal. This machine only runs MP, and thats it,.

the video does not stutter when recording is off and time shifting is off.

if i am recording or have timeshift on, it will randomly stutter maybe once every 2 to 5 minutes. sometimes it gets real bad and it says "signal Lost"

the audio then gets off sync for up to 30 seconds while it tries to catch up.

i just put in two more hard drives, IDE's. i setup MP so that it records to one hd for tuner1 and another hd for tuner 2. Still same probelm

[NLS]

Well now that you mention those details, it doesn't seem like a HD problem (even if not happening with timeshift off) - are your Hauppauge drivers fresh? (SHSPVR.com?)

What CODECs you use for TV?

[shred444]

drivers: yes i just installed teh card a week or two ago with the newest drivers from hauppauge. it worked perfectly fine for a week, now its starting this.

video codec: mpeg2dec filter
audio: mpeg/ac3/dts/lpcm audio decoder
deinterlace modeL none
default zoom mode: normal

timeshift buffer: 30 mins

no post processing
it still happens if i turn on or off ffdshow

[NLS]

try with the codecs hauppauge suggests

intervideo no css for hauppauge

[tein]

I would start the task-manager. Sort the processes for CPU-usage and wait for the stutter to see if some other process is busy when the problem arise. Its of course not certain that you can see which process is using the harddrive by checking its CPU-utilization, but its a simple test to do.

You may have to uncheck exclusive DirectX in the configuration in order to see the task manager on top of MP

[uninet]

From your description of the problem, it's hard to determine whether the rapid disk activity occurs simultaneously with the video stutter/freeze, or following. If simultaneous, a potential source of conflict may be due to Window XP's indexing service, as configured by the Computer Management Console.

The indexing service, if configured for "automatic," runs in the background and indexes the files (and their properties) on your local and remote drives. This is what allows the Explorer "Search" function to perform its task quickly.

While your system has plenty of CPU power, and your dual TV tuners have hardware MPEG-2 encoding, the indexing service sometimes causes disk thrashing when it runs in what appears to be a low "CPU load" environment. If so, you can configure this service, under "Services and Applications," to run in "Manual" rather than "Automatic" mode. Alternatively, you can remove the service altogether via the Control Panel's Add or Remove Programs and Windows Components.