Sage TV question

[jkmonroe]

Room to grow
I plan to RAID, then carve up into 50GB or so for system drive and carve the rest up.. haven't completely decided how... but from what I read, you can get around the 2TB limit in XP if you take 2 or more logical drives and span them in XP (can't be the system drive). ...

you can do that using Dynamic Disks, and you must have XP Pro to use them. However, there is no fail safe for dynamic disks. if you lose 1 disk, you lose them all. i would only recommend that way if the data is easily recreatable.

i would have to look to be certain, but are you sure you can get around the 2TB limit that way? i think youre capped there regardless of how you try to get past it. its certainly worth a double check.

edit: this is probably the best resource currently on the Internet for large storage arrays in home use

http://avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?...p;highlight=gpt

 

[samgreco]

Once this thing is humming perfectly, I don't want to touch it again...

How many times I've ignored that phrase...

 

[tmbrown97]

haha - yeah, but for this thing to be as bulletproof as my tivos have been, I need to treat it like an appliance, like the Tivo...

Not sure if that's true about the 2TB limit - read it in a few places - but if I'm wrong, it sounds like Sage will easily go across multiple drives - so that's my backup plan.

 

[samgreco]

Sage does make spanning drives/folder pretty seamless.

Just noticed you're from Sac. Spent three years there and worked at Skip's Music. Still have family there. Nice place.

 

[IVB]

sigh. I'm currently in Redding (2 hours north of Sacto). Drove 3.5 hours up here for a 1 hour meeting tomorrow, then 3.5 hours back.

On the upside, I did get to listen to the iPod music that my wife never lets me. (Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Wall, Led Zeppelin)...

 

[lpott6]

One solution to the 2TB limit is XP Pro 64 bit. I have a dedicated media server running XP64 with a 4TB raid 5 array. Plenty of room for all my movies and music (at least so far). Then I have 2 1TB drives for recorded TV from Sage.

I would be cautious about the Seagate 1.5TB drives at this point, I have read several accounts of lockups and also a jumper that limits through put to 1.5mb instead of 3.0mb. The jumper is simple, if you read how to remove it, but the lockups are scary.

One last point. Be sure to format your media storage drive with a 64kb block size. It will improve performance and reduce problems with streaming media.

Larry in Denver

 

[tmbrown97]

thx lpott6 - I had read that about the block size and will need to remember to do that. I'm cautious and paranoid about making this switch, so I'll be keeping my Tivos going until I know it's rock-solid... I'll also be sure to check out the jumpers on the drives. They'll be here Monday so I'll start playing then.

 

[sic0048]

I know Seagate has recently released a firmware for the 1.5tb drives. Whether it really fixed the problem or not I don't know.

 

[tmbrown97]

thanks - I'll look for that when I get the drives.

 

[lpott6]

I know Seagate has recently released a firmware for the 1.5tb drives. Whether it really fixed the problem or not I don't know.

That's good news, I hadn't heard about it. I have been holding off getting one until the problems were fixed.

 

[tmbrown97]

Coming together... just trying to figure out how to make the cabling not look like a complete cluster...

 

[Len12121]

First time user of Sage HD Media Extender. How do you get the DVD cover art to appear in Menu when using the extender in a standalone mode hooked up to USB Hard drive only?

 

[IVB]

If it's like when it's hooked up to the SageTV server, try putting a folder.jpg file inside the DVD folder.

 

[tmbrown97]

dunno yet... gimme a few dayz...

 

[comet48]

Each extender solution seems to have it's limitations. I have a couple of xbox360's and a ps3. They will not play back DVD's stored on a hard drive. the xbox360 requires xboxlive to playback divx, and the media center extender won't playback divx under any circumstances. The ps3 will playback divx, but a lot of my HD video has no sound on the ps3.
I have the Sage TV demo installed, and like the xbox360 and ps3, it appears incapable of handling BluRay. I have a lot of BluRay content I've generated from Adobe Premiere. Sure, I can generate those in a wmv HD format, but it's another render, and it's 6+hours for each hour of video even on a quadcore 6600. Untill Sage can handle BluRay, i don't consider it an acceptable HD media extender. When they can, I'll be buying them, unless I've found another acceptable solution before then.