Using DFS for storage

[Scoville]

I've got a quarter-terabyte of storage in the various computers at my house. I want to dedicate a new box to be a DVR using SnapStream, but I don't have any harddrives left over 4 gig.

Has anyone used a network share to store recorded movies? I use DFS (distributed File System) on my home network to transparently move files between systems as I rebuild / repair them and I was wondering if a UNC would work with SnapStream.

Anyone have any experience in this arena?

[WillP]

I don't use dfs, but I do record to and playback from a network share on another machine. The share actually consists of 2 200GB drives in a RAID-1 (mirror) array. Beats backing up 200GB to DVD

It works perfectly fine over my 100Mb LAN. I even recompress over the network. So far the most I've stressed this setup is playing back 2 different shows on 2 different PC's simultaneously while recording a different show from 1 of the PC's. No studdering whatsoever. The drives are WD special editions by the way (7200RPM, 8MB cache) on a Promise RAID controller.

Will

[nanook105]

Are there any special settings you use to create the network drive on your PVS workstation ? I periodically get a could not connect error. It mostly happens when I shut down and turn back on instead of reset

[WillP]

I simply have a network drive mapped to the PVS pc. Specifically I have the share mapped to F: . So I simply created a video folder in the web admin with the path "F:". That's it, nothing special. Works great and doesn't disconnect. I've never had a recording not work. Both machines are running Win2K Pro. I seem to be able to restart either machine without problems (as long as i'm not reading/writing to/from the drive at the time). One time I restarted the pc w/ the shared folder while a recompression was going on (oops!). I don't know about shutting one down and starting it up as opposed to restarting. I never seem to do that. Where does this error that you're getting appear? And which pc are you shutting down and starting up?

Will

[nanook105]

I have it mapped exactly the same, but with Z:\. I get the error on the workstation running SS. One of those annoying bubble popups from the system tray. I am replacing all of my hubs with gigabite switches, so I will see if I still have the problem after the upgrade.

[WillP]

Sounds like you're running XP. As far as I know Win2K doesn't have those bubble messages in the systray when network drives disconnect. Both my machines are using Win2K. Could be a network problem. Out of curiosity, after you get the disconnected message is PVS still able to record to the network drive?

Will

[nanook105]

Yes - I am running XP. I also figured out the problem. I shared the non SS workstation at the drive level and connected at a directory level. Once I shared at the directory level and reconnected at the directory level it worked fine. Live and learn.

[WillP]

Huh, very interesting. Good to know! Come to think of it I have a similar situation here. I have a bunch of folders shared on several pc's, which never disconnect. I also have the c: drive on the PVR machine shared and mapped to my main pc. It always shows as disconnected until I actually access it. Never made the connection (no pun intended).

Will

[viper5150]

I have a similar setup. I've got a linux machine with about 650g of drive space in on a raid card, sharing the drive with samba. I had a small problem of the video stream running slow (oddly enough, the audio came through fine). My problem was partly because I am encoding all my dvd's at 3500 bitrate so I'm guessing it wasn't pulling the stream fast enough. Tried many things, finally went into the divx configuration and turned the post-processing off on the divx decoder and it works just fine now. All of this, btw, is running over 100 mb netgear switch (although the linux box has 2 3com cards teamed). There is a 3rd option though if it doesn't turn out, which I'm actually looking into now. Lacie makes a 500gb external disk that plugs in via firewire 400/800 or usb 2.0. The killer is that firewire 800 can sustain a good connection with 100 meters (approx 300 feet) of cable! I'm half considering building a box with a rather large cf memory card in it and running xp embedded. That should cut out a lot of the noise (no longer need as many fans either).