Hi there,
I recently put together a new htpc, for which I used a Crucial Real SSD C 300 (128GB) as main drive. On that SSD is my operating system (Win 7), MediaPortal (single seat) and I also configured the TV-Server to put the timeshifting files on that drive. Furthermore there is also a 2 TB WD drive, which is only used as data drive (MP3s, DVDs, etc.). Both drives are connected to the ICH10R on my mainboard.
The htpc is running the whole day (no standby, etc.). After a while, I realized that there is only one problem with watching tv on that rig: When I started live TV in the evening after the htpc was idling the whole day, the stream often didn't start on the first try. When I started TV a second time, it took again quite a while (10 / 15s or so) but then the TV started. After that, when swithing channels, everything was smooth as silk (channel change times below 1s). The problem only occured, when I started the TV after it was switched off for a while.
I had a look into my log files and found this:
2011-01-25 21:10:19.080379 [Channel state thread(24)]: ChannelStates.DoSetChannelStates took 316 msec
2011-01-25 21:10:19.549406 [TS_File_Cleanup(25)]: card: delete timeshift files \live2-0.ts
2011-01-25 21:10:22.668585 [TS_File_Cleanup(23)]: card: delete timeshift files \live3-0.ts
2011-01-25 21:10:24.550692 [TS_File_Cleanup(25)]: card: delete timeshift files \live2-0.ts
2011-01-25 21:10:29.550978 [TS_File_Cleanup(25)]: card: delete timeshift files \live2-0.ts
This can't be normal. It can't take five seconds to delete a single file?!?
A reason may be that I switched off write caching in the device manager for the SSD. That was necessary, because I noticed that after some hard power offs I always faced corrupted files (MP XML-files not readable any more, MySQL-Server data files could not be opened, etc.). I very often had to hard power off other PCs, but only in one single case I had corrupted files - with this SSD I had corrupted files after every single hard power off. Therefore I switched off the write cache to make the PC bullet proof. Another thought would be trim, which is switched on. But trim shoudn't block the whole PC?!? Furthermore it can't be the fact that we're talking about a SSD as such, because in my other HTPC I'm using an Intel X-25-M (G2), with wich I never had such problems (also MediaPortal, also timeshift files on the SSD).
I'm still about to investigate this further, but it will take some time, since this is our new main tv set and I'm not "allowed" to disturb every couple of minutes when we're watching tv ;-) But I'll definitely report back as soon as I've found out the reason for this.
Has anyone else experienced such problems with SSDs as timeshifting drives? Are SSDs the right way to go for timeshifting at all? The first thing I'll try is to use my WD harddisk as timeshift drive (although the reason for not doing this was that I wanted the HTPC to be completely silent while watching TV). A problem I might face there is that the harddrive will be sleeping after a day of idling and starting TV would probably again take some seconds until the drive has spun up. Is there as solution for this (except for disabling sleep state completely for the harddisk of course). Any thoughts are appreciated.
Thanks and cheers,
Michael
I recently put together a new htpc, for which I used a Crucial Real SSD C 300 (128GB) as main drive. On that SSD is my operating system (Win 7), MediaPortal (single seat) and I also configured the TV-Server to put the timeshifting files on that drive. Furthermore there is also a 2 TB WD drive, which is only used as data drive (MP3s, DVDs, etc.). Both drives are connected to the ICH10R on my mainboard.
The htpc is running the whole day (no standby, etc.). After a while, I realized that there is only one problem with watching tv on that rig: When I started live TV in the evening after the htpc was idling the whole day, the stream often didn't start on the first try. When I started TV a second time, it took again quite a while (10 / 15s or so) but then the TV started. After that, when swithing channels, everything was smooth as silk (channel change times below 1s). The problem only occured, when I started the TV after it was switched off for a while.
I had a look into my log files and found this:
2011-01-25 21:10:19.080379 [Channel state thread(24)]: ChannelStates.DoSetChannelStates took 316 msec
2011-01-25 21:10:19.549406 [TS_File_Cleanup(25)]: card: delete timeshift files \live2-0.ts
2011-01-25 21:10:22.668585 [TS_File_Cleanup(23)]: card: delete timeshift files \live3-0.ts
2011-01-25 21:10:24.550692 [TS_File_Cleanup(25)]: card: delete timeshift files \live2-0.ts
2011-01-25 21:10:29.550978 [TS_File_Cleanup(25)]: card: delete timeshift files \live2-0.ts
This can't be normal. It can't take five seconds to delete a single file?!?
A reason may be that I switched off write caching in the device manager for the SSD. That was necessary, because I noticed that after some hard power offs I always faced corrupted files (MP XML-files not readable any more, MySQL-Server data files could not be opened, etc.). I very often had to hard power off other PCs, but only in one single case I had corrupted files - with this SSD I had corrupted files after every single hard power off. Therefore I switched off the write cache to make the PC bullet proof. Another thought would be trim, which is switched on. But trim shoudn't block the whole PC?!? Furthermore it can't be the fact that we're talking about a SSD as such, because in my other HTPC I'm using an Intel X-25-M (G2), with wich I never had such problems (also MediaPortal, also timeshift files on the SSD).
I'm still about to investigate this further, but it will take some time, since this is our new main tv set and I'm not "allowed" to disturb every couple of minutes when we're watching tv ;-) But I'll definitely report back as soon as I've found out the reason for this.
Has anyone else experienced such problems with SSDs as timeshifting drives? Are SSDs the right way to go for timeshifting at all? The first thing I'll try is to use my WD harddisk as timeshift drive (although the reason for not doing this was that I wanted the HTPC to be completely silent while watching TV). A problem I might face there is that the harddrive will be sleeping after a day of idling and starting TV would probably again take some seconds until the drive has spun up. Is there as solution for this (except for disabling sleep state completely for the harddisk of course). Any thoughts are appreciated.
Thanks and cheers,
Michael