[confirm] Problem with Timeshift on Ramdisk (1 Viewer)

[Perls]

It seems that not only cheap usb flash drives have problems, I have an intel x25m which, according to several
reviews, should be one of the best ssd drives. I had problems with irregular short freezes of a couple of seconds,
on the tv-picture, could be everything between a couple of minutes and half an hour between them but I think
there was some correlation to the size of the timeshift files and it was also more frequent on hd channels
(none of these observervations statistically proven however
Anyhow, after investigating everything else (tv-signal, cpu-load, codecs, drivers) I tried to put the time-shift files
on ramdisk and the problems are completly gone. A bit of a problem as this gives very little time for pausing a
hd-channel and I really don't want to put a mechanical disk in the htpc again.

 

[pilehave]

A dedicated 8 GB RAM-drive will take around $200 out of your wallet. I think it's worth the extra cash to get something that just works with no wear and no delay.
But I am also a bit puzzled, as to why timeshift space suddenly became twice as costly, from one version to another

 

[doveman]

Would not a more cost effective method be to use a 30GB SSD drive for about £76?

 

[pilehave]

Would not a more cost effective method be to use a 30GB SSD drive for about £76?

The post above mine suggests that an SSD is not really well suited for the task, but perhaps others have a different experience?

 

[doveman]

Oh yeah

Must have been too tired to take it in when I skimmed that post.

 

[jimbeam128]

Hello again all,

elliottmc: You mentioned

However, if there are good technical reasons for it working this way, then I don't expect it to change.

I think if we finally have to use twice the space for timeshift, ramdisk makes no sense any more. When you take 4 GB for Ramdisk, then it´s reduced to 2 GB for timeshifting. Therefore "ramdisk" would be very expensive. Would be better if you could use the whole space.

2nd:

Since memory cards are cheap these days, why not get an 8GB or 16GB USB flash drive and connect it internally to a USB header on your motherboard. This would be cheaper that using RAM and should be fast enough for your needs.

I think that´s not an option for me and may people, because I and the others want to use a really fast buffer and USB is quite "slow". To have a fast HTPC using RAM would be the most reliable thing.

By the way, you mentined that this things have been discussed in another Thread. Can you post the Link for that thread?

 

[jonm]

Would not a more cost effective method be to use a 30GB SSD drive for about £76?

The post above mine suggests that an SSD is not really well suited for the task, but perhaps others have a different experience?

30Gb OCZ SSD working fine for me as my C drive and for timeshifting.

 

[offbyone]

You are killing your drive with that much writing ... Sure it works, but you are reducing the lifespan of the memory cells beeing extensivly overwritten. SSD cells cannot be overwritten that often.

 

[tourettes]

You are killing your drive with that much writing ... Sure it works, but you are reducing the lifespan of the memory cells beeing extensivly overwritten. SSD cells cannot be overwritten that often.

I'm quite sure that you cannot kill SSD with timeshifting. SSD drives are having logic that tries to avoid the same blocks to be used constantly -> we can assune that SSD is "filled in linear fashion".

30 GB disk gets filled once per 10 to 15 hours with SD TV. If you are watching tv for 5 hours a day and SSD last 10000 write cycles fo a memory block (I hope it is much, much bigger) it would allow SSD to last for 54 years...

 

[offbyone]

The older SSD drives do NOT have that logic! I own an OCZ Core with 30GB (might be the same as mentioned above) and can say from experiance thatmy drive gets slower the more I write.

(And I didn't literally mean kill, just degraded performance)