SSD

a. SSDs are not suited to AV work with the constant writing and rewriting.:(
b. Why would you want to waste your money on one that is a suitable size?:roflmao:
c. There would be absolutely no advantage other than a bit of power saving over a 2 1/2" HDD and a bit more compared with a 5 1/4 HDD.
Other than that. I suspect that no one has actually tried one. (for the above reasons):)
By all means stick one in your PC/lappy, they make a huge difference to startup and program access times:)
 
I am currently running a small SSD by USB on a HD-FOX as the "hard drive", with TSR enabled and it never turned off, as a stress test. Regular readers may recall that I have killed several UPDs in regular service as CF hosts, even without enabling TSR, most likely due to heat (af123 runs a metal-cased UPD without similar problems).

If you look through the HD-FOX section you will find the date I started the test; the SSD is still working fine.

(However, SSDs of a realistic size are waaay too expensive to bung in a PVR, IMO)
 
I am currently running a small SSD by USB on a HD-FOX as the "hard drive", with TSR enabled and it never turned off, as a stress test. Regular readers may recall that I have killed several UPDs in regular service as CF hosts, even without enabling TSR, most likely due to heat (af123 runs a metal-cased UPD without similar problems).
Interesting BH. Are you trying to destroy it?:) I assume that you will report back in the fullness of time. Do they have such things as reallocated sectors on the SMART?
(However, SSDs of a realistic size are waaay too expensive to bung in a PVR, IMO)
Exactly my point b.
 
Mine's working fine too on an HD, although the SMART was tripped to start with (which is the reason I'm using it, to see how bu**ered it really is and whether I can kill it totally).
 
a. SSDs are not suited to AV work with the constant writing and rewriting.:(
b. Why would you want to waste your money on one that is a suitable size?:roflmao:
c. There would be absolutely no advantage other than a bit of power saving over a 2 1/2" HDD and a bit more compared with a 5 1/4 HDD.
Other than that. I suspect that no one has actually tried one. (for the above reasons):)
By all means stick one in your PC/lappy, they make a huge difference to startup and program access times:)

a) Rubbish
b) It isn't a wast of money if I have a good reason - its a good use of money
c) I can think of 3 that anyone else can think of plus the reason I'm interested in
d) well - yes of course - I will do what I like with my own equipment

Do you have some sort of anti-SSD fetish?
A simple "I don't know of anyone" would have answered my simple question.
 
c) I can think of 3 that anyone else can think of plus the reason I'm interested in
Which 3 had you in mind?

For now I can think of only 3 potential improvements. Namely:
1/ Reduced heat and therefore a potential increase in the longevity of the other components.
2/ Reduced noise, mainly from the potential reduced work by the fan but that would negate benefit 1/ to some extent. I have come across an HDR-FOX T2 which had a drive that could be heard even with the TV not muted, but I rectified that by replacing the HDD with another HDD.
3/ A possible performance boost to the web-if, but not to much else.
The Humax OS is kept in flash and its performance will not be directly influenced by installing an SSD.
The SSDs come into their own for random access, which would be of little benefit for buffer and recordings especially when the main performance limiter is the processing involved and that includes encryption and decryption. Performance wise that leaves the web-if which may be limited by the processing power rather than disk access speed.
 
a. Its not rubbish.
b. You win on that one.
c. Let's hear your 4 then.
d. Did I suggest otherwise?
Do you have some sort of anti-SSD fetish?
Absolutely not. They are wondrous things in places where they give a real benefit, such as a computer boot drive. I have three computers that all have SSDs and am mightily impressed with the added performance they give and I am not in the slightest concerned about the advantages of their quietness or power saving qualities.
A simple "I don't know of anyone" would have answered my simple question.
And that in itself would have been a stupid answer, even more stupid than the one that I gave.
Other than that. I suspect that no one has actually tried one. (for the above reasons):)
OK, so I was partially wrong on that one as others here admit to running one on an HD (not an HDR). But it was only a suspicion anyway.

Sounds like 3-1 BH;)
 
Theoretically speaking, and notwithstanding that I have yet to break mine (which I don't care about because it was only cheap, and runs out of space pretty quick if I actually record something), I would be concerned about spending out on a decent sized SSD for use in the HDR-FOX because of the risk of reaching its write cycle limit. Okay, I don't know the detail of how wear levelling works, but the 'Fox is constantly writing to a small portion of the disk. Either levelling can move existing, less frequently written, data around to accommodate dynamic data, or it has to confine itself to unused areas of drive (of which there won't be many when it's full of recordings). Either way I would be concerned and more inclined to invest in proven cheap HDD technology than unproven expensive SSD technology.
 
Theoretically speaking, and notwithstanding that I have yet to break mine (which I don't care about because it was only cheap, and runs out of space pretty quick if I actually record something), I would be concerned about spending out on a decent sized SSD for use in the HDR-FOX because of the risk of reaching its write cycle limit. Okay, I don't know the detail of how wear levelling works, but the 'Fox is constantly writing to a small portion of the disk. Either levelling can move existing, less frequently written, data around to accommodate dynamic data, or it has to confine itself to unused areas of drive (of which there won't be many when it's full of recordings). Either way I would be concerned and more inclined to invest in proven cheap HDD technology than unproven expensive SSD technology.

I suspect you haven't broken yours yet because one of the specifications is listed as 'full disc writes' and a lot of recent specs I have seen for this would have the SSD last for several years (something in the region of 3-5 years IIRC) at a full disk write every day.

Wear levelling works by using a new region of the SSD when a sector gets rewritten. So if sector 714 is written it gets written to a different area of the SSD to where the last sector 714 was written. The onboard intelligence keeps track of the physical to logical mapping of sectors, a slightly different process to the alternate sector mapping of spinning rust drive, as the map has to keep track of the complete sector mapping for the whole drive, where on spinning rust drives the header of a sector has a flag that marks it as bad and the drive controller then references an alternate sector area that contains a map of physical sector to alternate sector to find out which alternate sector should be read instead.

However a similar process to alternate sectors is used in an SSD as the NAND chips do have spare areas that can replace any faulty areas on the chip. This also means that is the SSD has been written to capacity it is still possible to do wear levelling by using some of the spare area to write the new data to, releasing the previous location as a spare sector for the next write. Details of this is available in the datasheets of NAND chips and applications notes from the chip manufacturers.
 
Has anyone gone ahead and tried using an SSD in the HDR-fox?

PS
Happy new year ... just to be first

I will add my twopence to the discussion. I have a 5800rpm conventional 1TB AV drive in my Foxsat-HDR (Has the CF). It's fast enough to record two HD channels at once and replay a HD recording to a HDMI connected source. In addition it has no issue in replaying at least 3 HD seperate recordings to other destinations at the same time. It's been used daily since 2008. What perfomance increase could a expensive small capacity SSD offer ?

A standard USB 2.0 drive used for recording on my IP connected V-Box DVB-T2 twin tuner manages to record 4 Freeview-HD channels at the same time across 2 MUX and that's just USB2.0.

Look at the data rate used for even HD recordings compared to even the lowest speed conventional SATA drives. As already said SSD has it's place when large amounts of data need to be transferred quickly. Conventional drives (even low speed, low power optimised AV drives) do not compromise performance in any way. So by all means fit one, do not expect any performance increase and expect to replace it more often than a conventional drive.
 
You've got one, eh?! How do you get in with it?

It's pretty good but don't currently expect the recording capability of say a HDR-FOX-T2 in terms of series and accurate recording. Also there is currently no epg entries on BBC channels (Huffman encoding). Can watch TV anywhere with access to WiFi using phone or tablet though upload link is not good enough for HD (In effect like a slingbox). Best PVR client is the Kodi one for mobile kit. Also (a bit of luck) my Smart LG bluray works with the box TV gateway software so if I want to watch on the main TV's I just use the blu-ray player. Firefox has a add on that makes it simple to use remote scheduling and watch on a laptop. I use it every day to watch the Breakfast news on my Samsung tablet. I can upload some photos of the interface on my tablet/PC if you are interested.
 
Don't go to that trouble for the moment, I'm only inquiring casually. If/when there is active interest (from me or anyone else) we'll have to set up a specific topic.
 
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