How bad are these numbers.

[cack01]

OK I have a seagate 40gb ST3200822A in my HTPC.

Lately I have wanted to capture video at 640X480 and possibly higher. The problem is now I am dropping frames, in fact lots of frames. About 14%.

I benched using HDtach and got these numbers:

Random Access 20.3ms
CPU utilization 2%
Average read 25.6 MB/s

The drive had 25% space free and was defragmented just before the test.
I am making an assumption that the read speed should be close to the average write.


Not worrying about my other hardware, do those numbers support the premise that my HDD needs to be replaced in order to get a good 29.97 fps?

I thinking about getting the seagate ST3200822A but I'm worried prices may drop on similar drives after thanksgiving.

thanks,
cack01

[Know Nuttin]

random access is very high. and average read is pretty low.

i just ran it on my seagate 80gb with 2mb cache and i got 15.6ms and 46.5mb/sec.

on my seagate 160gb, i get 14.9ms and 46.6mb/sec

[teddy-2 john]

you have 25% free space .. i`v notices that any hard drive i`v had ,if it`s more than 1/2 full it will slow down the compuder .hope this helps.ps, love w/d raptors :burn:

[cack01]

Thanks guys.

The numbers Know Nuttin posted made me cringe.

[shrinkydinx]

heres my c and d drives :) my c drive is speshl

http://www.imagedump.com/index.cgi?pick=get&tp=149697

[Dc5e]

well, what codec are you encoding to when your capturing video?

The two major bottle necks should be either the cpu or hard-drive. If you capture raw video, its very hard-drive dependent and takes ALOT of space. But if you try to encode real time, your cpu will have to be fast enough not to drop frames, but the amount of space it takes will be alot less.

[cack01]

I usually encode using XVID at a bitrate of 700 (Which is pretty low). At 320x240 w/same setting on everything else I get zero dropped frames. Moving to 640x480 causes all hell to break loose. I do not encode audio in real time, b/c I have yet to get any program to use the mp3 codec in realtime.

If your wondering, the cpu is a Tbred @ 2Ghz 400 FSB