[vdr] Re: 18 Minutes - what does that tell?

["Rienecker, Fa. Evenio, ITS P, M" <C.Rienecker@deutschepost.de>]

> 
> On Thu, 04 Apr 2002 11:59:15 +0200, Klaus Schmidinger
> <Klaus.Schmidinger@cadsoft.de> wrote:
> 
> > So the first recording that starts would stop the noflushd, 
> and the CRON
> > job would finally start it again.
> 
> I don't think that it is a very good idea to stop and start disks so
> often. Maxtor specifies about 50000 start/stop cycles for its hard
> disks. If the disk starts and stops 100 times a day because of some
> events which do a disk access, then the live time is not very long. I
> would really recommend to let them run 24/7 or watch the 
> start/stop rate
> very carefully.
> 
> Emil
> 
> 

It' not about lifetime. That is of minor importance. It's about having a quiet SetTopBox.
Using nfs would help, but you will certainly not be able to take the box to a friend of yours then.
I used noflushd quite some time. 100 cycles a day is far too high a value. It's somewhere around 10, sometimes 20 cycles a day (depends on what else is running on your system). So 10-20 cycles a day makes appx. 7-13 years.
But running the HDD 24/7 will reach 80000 hours in about 9 years (I don't know the exact value for MTBF for Maxtor). But it consumes a lot more power (that I don't mind that much) and produces quiet some heat (that _IS_ a real problem if your box is supposed to be quiet, i.e. having no fans.

So I think it's a matter of personal opinion.

CU,
Christian.