Program files on a fast USB flash drive (150X-200X)? (1 Viewer)

[giantjoebot]

I just got the idea that maybe it would be a good idea to put the my program files (including Media Portal) on a USB flash drive. A really fast one 25-35MB/s (150X-200X). Like a Corsair Voyager GT.

What do you guys think?

Oh yeah,
about how big of a drive would I need, and how big is the program folder on your HTPC?

 

[joystick]

This was my very first though when I built up my first HTPC, but, there are two things to this:

First:
USB Flash drives have a very limited total number of read/write cycles, this means that if yiu have your system files on this, it will soon be brocken. 'cause of system cache and mp access etc.

second:
I tried to connect via a IDE/USB adapter, which worked but the performace is not too good

Also, a small HDD is still quite, cheap and more performant.
And performance is what it is all about in regards of timeshifting, channel change, and startup etc.
Plus: My Vista setup needs at least 20gb of disk space, no MP installed....

I ended up with a ususal setup....


cheers
joystick

 

[giantjoebot]

I don't mean the "System files", or putting any of the TV recording, including time shifting on it. I'm talking about putting the program files on it. You know like C:\Program Files.

The system files would stay on the hard drive. I'll be using a second hard drive for the time shifting and TV recordings, and a bunch of storage drives for Video and music.

I'm talking about just the program files. I sort of got the idea after reading this thing someone wrote about installing Media Portal. He said to put your program files on separate partition. The benefits that I think this would have is that all of media portal's, and any other installed software, will be read off the USB flash drive instead of the hard drive. It just offloads some of the work, and since program files are generally small they don't need a huge amount of bandwidth, but can benefit from the low latency that flash drives provide. Plus program files don't get read or wrote that often, so you won't wear out your drive that fast. And a 2 or 4GB drive is easy to backup. So even if something happens to it, you can always replace it.

You wouldn't have to use a IDE adapter for just the Program Files. You can just plug it into the back USB. You can even formate the USB drive to NTFS. I plan on using an old USB header adapter that normally goes to one of the PCI slot covers, and taking the metal off, and just tape it to the bottom of the case. That way its not sticking out the back, and get knocked out by the cat or something.

Its things like page files, and time shifting that will wear out flash drives, because they are constantly getting read, and written to, but that shouldn't be the case with the Program Files. I'm pretty sure that a flash drive would last a long time this way.

 

[Marcusb]

It could work, but I don't think it would be as beneficial as you'd think.
MP starting may be a small about faster, but I don't think there's enough accessing after MP starts that would give you a noticable benefit.
With regards to the number of write operations that SSD can handle, this has improved quite a bit lately so wouldn't be much of an issue but the thing I would worry about is that sometimes USB mass storage devices don't start up straight away with windows. Once the OS loads, it can take a small amount of time before the drive is visible in Windows Explorer.
You'd get all sorts of errors if windows tried to load MP before the drive was completely ready

 

[giantjoebot]

I was thinking about it not starting up in time, might be a problem, and might not.

I guess it might benefit me more than others, because I plan on having other programs running in the background, such as a bittorrent client. I'm also going to have several other programs running so that I can connect to it from work, and if my roommate is using it at the same time then... Well some of the programs that I'll have running are Orb, Jinzorra, and filezilla server.

I wonder if splitting up the program files would help, like put media portal on the flash drive, and all my other programs on the hard drive. I would think that it would at least help keep media portal from slowing down due to other programs.