ESATA Pipe dream?

[Mike Farrington]

Let's say that internal and external SATA drives could be used in RAID0 configuration (or pseudo-RAID0 where even video bytes are written to one disk and odd bytes to the other).

Would that increase overall throughput to allow for more tuners? Be it 2CC+OTA or 4CC tuners (using those multi-stream cards)?

Or are there some hardware/chipset limitations that would prevent this (I'm not up to date with the inner workings of the S3 yet).

On a side-note, if they ever turn on that ESATA port, it would be nice if the software and database partitions were mirrored so that the TiVo could withstand the loss of one of its drives (sure some recordings would disappear, but its better than being totally down).

[TydalForce]

The number of tuners is, of course, based on hardware inside the box (the acutal "tuners") and is also restricted by both CPU power and hard disk bandwidth.

RAID would help, but the CPU would have to be faster (probably) and, of course, more hardware tuners. (Sidenote: it's my understanding that the tuners themselves are the largest chunk of the hardware cost)


I do agree about the drive-specific database listings. I'd expect that the external drive would be separate enough from the internal drive so people could swap them in and out without corrupting anything. I'm sure some people will want a "Copy to external drive" option so they can archive stuff they want to keep to various external drives, and hotswap them around.

That'd be good for TiVo too since people could (and probably would) buy multiple drives

[joker81]

I don;t think they will raid the drives since the esata drive will always be problematic in that it can be disconnected at any time. Hopefully how it is coded that when you add a second drive hotswapping action goes on and the tivo files stored on the drive pop up in the now playing list. You will probably have to goto a screen saying please remove/add external drive so all writes and reads are stopped on the drive when you want to eject. If not we will have to reset the tivo every time the external enclosure loses power or is disconnected. I would think the tivos would have to encrypt the files on the drive with either the MAK or the TSN so you couldn't download HD content and give the drive to a friend. If it was MAK you could probably hook it up to another S3 on your account.

[TydalForce]

I agree - an "unmount" option will probably be required.

I'd like to see MAK instead of TSN, since that way you could build your own Sneaker-Net version of Multi-Room Viewing ;-}

[dagap]

RAID striping is performed at block level, not byte level. 8K, 16K, 64K, whatever ... one block for me and one for you, repeat.

[Mike Farrington]

Also, I wonder if Tivo just intends the ESATA port to be used for a replacement drive (overriding the internal port). Since HD failure is the most common form of TiVo failure, they could just sell TiVo-branded external replacement drives.

That would be mean to us, yet understandable since supporting a fixed+removable drive(s) could be a pain the ass.