Post
by nylonnet » Mon Nov 13, 2017 15:21
All that follows is opinion. Your needs may vary.
The best disk size will depend on your personal viewing habits. I used to have a 4TB drive when I had little time to catch up on recordings.
Now I am retired, I have more time, and a little 240GB SSD is now perfect.
When I had a 4TB HDD, I had two-year-old recordings to catch up with!
One day I forced myself to actually preview them - and deleted 90% of them in about 10 minutes because they were rubbish or irrelevant.
I can get about 60 half-hour shows on my 240GB SSD (assuming an average 4GB per half hour of HD recordings) . That's about 9 a day - far more than I actually use, even if a 1 or 2 hour movie or doco is occasionally included. And since I have time to watch and delete stuff during the week, I have yet to fill the little 240GB SSD.
Tip: If you are stretched for capacity, you can turn off or size-limit the drive's recycle bin.
The best disk size for you depends on how much you record per day/week, and how much you can watch and delete recordings.
No-one but you can work that out.
If I were you, I'd take note of the total size of your recordings that are still on your device after 1 week.
You might find that a multi-terabyte fancy-pants disk is overkill.
I would not spend megabucks on a Wiz HDD. Even if the HDD went belly-up, it's only TV - you can often record shows again via repeats in the next day or two, or you can use iView or similar to catch up on lost shows. (Cough - or you can torrent most of them. )
A buggered Wiz disk is not life-threatening. If a recording IS vital, copy it to another device.
So, my advice:
- if you have modest recording needs, use an SSD if you already have one lying around. It's silent, cool, fast and uses little electricity.
- if you have any 2.5" or 3.5" HDD of about 1TB or bigger, use that. I would not worry about shingles, speed, red/green/blue labels, etc.
- if you must buy a disk, nearly any 2.5" or 3.5" HDD would do. Go cheap - as I said above, if you do have vital recordings, back them up to another device, e.g. USB, NAS.
- if you want/need to buy an SSD, wait until 2018. I've read rumours that SSD prices will soon drop dramatically.
- if you want/need to buy an HDD, I have had no problems with WD disks. Actually, I've had no problems with Seagate either in the past few decades. I think for Wiz purposes, they're all much of a muchness.
IMO, worrying too much about a Wiz disk is unnecessary.
Just back up essential recordings.
If your disk does die - and realise that is still a very rare event - just shrug, toss in a new disk, format it, and move on. No-one has yet died from losing an episode of Ellen.
Your mileage may vary.
Regards
Mark
Wiz U4 (500GB SSD)
- ASUS VIVOMINI VC65R-G002M as a download/media server
- Harmony 650
- Synology DS-418 (36TB) NAS
- Panasonic Viera 55" plasma TV
- Yamaha RX-565 receiver / amp
- Subaru BRZ
- Coolmax socks, Bonds jocks.
)
so now just for the wait for them to hit our shores.
