Suggestion for 27 GB RAM for timeshift (1 Viewer)

[powermarcel10]

Hi guys, a bit off topic, sorry for that, but maybe some of you can give me some answers as I have personally no experience with the use of a ramdisk drive..

I'm building a new high end htpc at this moment with 16GB of RAM. At this time this is overkill off course, even for gaming it's way to much. How ever, I was thinking of creating a ramdisk drive only for Media portal. So that I install the complete installation of Mediaportal on that Ramdisk drive.

I know that the drive is empty as soon as I disable the machine, but a lot of software offers the option to backup the image of the drive and put it back everything you restart your pc.

The question is if this will working fine, fast and if it is reliable.

Last but not least; how many ram do I need for let we say, 1 hour of time shift buffer for an HD channel. Is 2GB for that enough? Or are those files way bigger.. In that case I could set the time shift buffer to the normal D drive wich has 2TB.

I will install Windows an other programs to a RAID0 configuration of 2 Samsung 840 Pro's 128gb ssd's. That is already damn fast. Should a ramdisk still be a lot faster? And should I been able to see the difference?

 

[breese]

While never trying to install the entire application on a ram drive I can point you to a few options
1-Dataram (and some others) allow you to create any size ramdrive you want and have the ability to save it back to the image file on shutdown or restart. Crashes will cause a loss of anything not saved to the image file.
2-You can also set them up to launch from different ram drive images. The change will need to be done before a restart from their control settings
3-Ram Drives are Incredibly Fast... I have yet to see anything as fast including SSD drives.

As for MP2, there is a configuration file you can change after it is installed allowing data and log folders to be located someplace other than the stock install.... Fresh installs will wipe out the file so if you decide to use this method, keep a copy someplace
http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/2_MEDIAPORTAL_2/9_Reference/Folder//File_Locations

 

[powermarcel10]

Thanks @breese

I already have seen Mediaportal was starting faster on a single SSD than on a traditional HDD. Also after placing a second SSD in RAID0 I was absolutely seeing improvements again..

So I hope that installing MP on a ramdisk will give me even better performance. Maybe it will starting up as fast as Xbmc!

What do you guys think about the size? I think I can mis 6 GB of my ram for creating a ramdisk.

I will play a bit with the different software bundels you suggested. I will let you guys know if it is worth a try.

About a crash... Off course that could happen.. Will the software set back the latest image that was created? Or is everything really lost than..

 

[breese]

The ram drive will always read the Image file you have created and assigned to start in their control panel.
I have a 16G machine and have 6G assigned to a ram drive R:
Time shifting can eat up a lot of this if you plan to use it.

Another benefit of Ram Drives vers SSD, there is no limit on the # of writes.....

 

[powermarcel10]

The ram drive will always read the Image file you have created and assigned to start in their control panel.
I have a 16G machine and have 6G assigned to a ram drive R:
Time shifting can eat up a lot of this if you plan to use it.

Another benefit of Ram Drives vers SSD, there is no limit on the # of writes.....

Allright, thanks. What is the benefit of using a ramdisk only for timeshift? What is going exactly faster? Changing channels or something like that?

Also, like I asked, what size has a timeshift of 1 hour for an HD channel by example? Any idea?

 

[breese]

MM and others would be better at answering these questions...
I can tell you that having time shifting on the ram drive allows for Smooth Playback when you want to Replay something.