Timeshift on RAM-Disk (1 Viewer)

[Cuitlahac]

Would this speed up my tv in general?

I use a 1GB ramdisk on my system, but don't feel a speedup in channel switching (1-2 secs., DVB-S, no HD-channels, no pay-TV/CI). Channel switching on digital cards takes generally more time than with analog cards. Switching to/from HD channels or scrambled streams (pay-TV) may even take a little bit longer. The digital data stream has to be decoded which takes it's time after tuning in. That's not an origin MediaPortal problem.

I have 6gb of 800mhz ram can I assign 2gb?

Sure you can. My 1 GB ramdisk gives me about 20-30 mins of timeshifting buffer. I really don't need more. You say you rarely use timeshifting. So why give it 2 GB ram?

As I wrote it doesn't speed up things really. I made it just because it's possible and I wanted to test it.
Sorry, but MP doesn't really benefit as much from a ramdisk as some people would wish.

But a ramdisk could speed up a system in general if you put your \Temp and chache folders (windows, Internetexplorer, Firefox etc.) on it. Working on a PC with such a setting is a lot smoother here.

But If you are happy with your system, don't change it. Never change a running system, unless you search for a new challenge...

Regards,
Michael

 

[settingsun]

thanks for the great reply! Think I will leave it alone. many thanks

 

[tourettes]

As I wrote it doesn't speed up things really. I made it just because it's possible and I wanted to test it.
Sorry, but MP doesn't really benefit as much from a ramdisk as some people would wish.

But a ramdisk could speed up a system in general if you put your \Temp and chache folders (windows, Internetexplorer, Firefox etc.) on it. Working on a PC with such a setting is a lot smoother here.

But If you are happy with your system, don't change it. Never change a running system, unless you search for a new challenge...

Even in theory the RAM disk wont speed up zapping etc. The fastest part in the chain is already hard disk (there are few seek operations that take few ms to complete during zapping, and those you can spot from the TsReader.log).

So, no one should play with RAM disk to gain speed, but if its quietness as no HD access is there then it might be suitable (but I would still recomend people to build a proper HTPC that doesnt have noise from HD access).

 

[Vattenmelon]

I have assigned 1,5 gb of 4gb (well only 3gb due to windows and all that 32bit thing) to a ram drive using the ramdisk program. It works just fine, but as other says, there is no speed gain. But it gives a little satisfaction that the harddrive-activity light is not blinking when timeshifting

 

[Redth]

In my case, I found stuttering/signal corruption issues, and when I moved my timeshift to ramdisk this went away. Turns out my RAID setup was performing WAY slower than it should have been which was the issue. I've since resolved that issue, but I'm still using my RAMdisk for timeshift since I find I do a lot of other Hard drive IO operations like streaming media to other machines from the hard drive, and torrenting while watching tv. My TV has been 100% stutter free using this configuration.

 

[Guzzi]

Even in theory the RAM disk wont speed up zapping etc. The fastest part in the chain is already hard disk (there are few seek operations that take few ms to complete during zapping [...].

@Tourettes: But this behaviour only applies, if the HD is already spinned up - I experienced the problem, that whenever I started liveTV it took several seconds until the harddisk was ready to perform the first operation - and this was the reason why I switched to a ramdisc for timeshifting. This keeps it possible to save energy during most of the time, when no client is accessing the tv-server...
regards, Guzzi

 

[tourettes]

@Tourettes: But this behaviour only applies, if the HD is already spinned up - I experienced the problem, that whenever I started liveTV it took several seconds until the harddisk was ready to perform the first operation - and this was the reason why I switched to a ramdisc for timeshifting. This keeps it possible to save energy during most of the time, when no client is accessing the tv-server...
regards, Guzzi

HD's foot print is pretty minimal when it comes to energy consumption, but yes in such use case the RAM disk has its benefit.

 

[Guzzi]

@Tourettes: But this behaviour only applies, if the HD is already spinned up - I experienced the problem, that whenever I started liveTV it took several seconds until the harddisk was ready to perform the first operation - and this was the reason why I switched to a ramdisc for timeshifting. This keeps it possible to save energy during most of the time, when no client is accessing the tv-server...
regards, Guzzi

HD's foot print is pretty minimal when it comes to energy consumption, but yes in such use case the RAM disk has its benefit.

The problem comes if you have several other HDs as mass storage in the same machine ... - disabling powersaving for HD afaik only works globally - so it is a difference of approx 4-8 watts per drive between powerdon and spinning. Having 10 drives is 50 watts difference, which is quite a bit ;-)
If anybody has hints how to selectively enable/disable powermanagement for individual harddrives, please let me know, I would be very interested. Last such tool known to me was working with win95 and scsi-drives only ... but well, this goes offtopic here...
Another "ontopic question": anybody knows a (free?) ramdiskdriver for 64 bit with signed drivers?

 

[ItsMe57]

Some words on RamDisk and timeshifting.

I have installed a RamDisk today.
In MP Config there is a 512 MB File configured for timeshifting.

I create a RamDisk with 512 MB, TV could not start.
Log=

11-01-2009 09:38:27.703 MultiFileWriter: not enough free diskspace
11-01-2009 09:38:27.703 Recorder: TIMESHIFT failed to open filename:R:\\live1-0.ts.tsbuffer 183
11-01-2009 09:38:42.718 Recorder: TIMESHIFT Stop 'R:\\live1-0.ts.tsbuffer'
11-01-2009 09:38:42.718 Recorder: TIMESHIFT Reset

So i did a resize to 768 MB for the RamDisk.
Nothing changed - no TV.

In MP Config there is a parameter for files.
min=6, max=20
I changed to 3 and 3 (no chance to make it smaller).

No TV.

Then I configured 128 MB in MP Config.

TV was running!!

But, no change on the zapping speed.

3-4 seconds, with or without RamDisk.

I dont need a RamDisk.

Bye
R.