Hard disk thrashing w/ multple threads

[danknugz]

Hello, I noticed that sabnzbd can support 8 or 20 simultaneous streams, my quesiton is, when they are all writing to the hard disk at the same time, is this bad for the drive since the head is bouncing all over to keep up w/ the writes? Is it a good idea to have a dedicated drive only for downloading because of this?

Thanks

[shypike]

Hard disks can handle this and your system probably has a disk cache anyway.
The best solution is to set a article cache in Config->General.
If you have plenty memory, set it to -1.
This way SABnzbd will keep all articles in memory until it can
write eveything to a disk file.
Using multiple drives is always better, especially during unpacking.

[danknugz]

Hey man thanks for the tip, i actually do use multiple drives for unpacking but is there a way to split the download streams onto multiple drives?

[shypike]

No, downloading is to just one drive.

[danknugz]

ok thanks, i forgot to ask this too,

under folder options, i have the temp and completed folders on the same drive. with auto extraction on, if i move the completed folder off to a different drive, will sabnzbd extract directly to that drive, or will it move the files to that drive first, then extract? also does it wait to begin downloading the next queue, until all the files are extracted?

[shypike]

The temporary and complete folders can be on different drives.
And should be for maximum performance.
I was under the impression that you asked to spread "temporary", which is not possible.

[Jim]

The best solution is to set a article cache in Config->General.
If you have plenty memory, set it to -1.
This way SABnzbd will keep all articles in memory until it can

how much is plenty memory?
i've set it to 128MB.
would -1 be better?

[shypike]

Makes little difference.
The cache should be about 1.5 times the largest single file (which is mostly 50MB).

[danknugz]

The temporary and complete folders can be on different drives.
And should be for maximum performance.
I was under the impression that you asked to spread "temporary", which is not possible.

Ok well I was going to do that, but I was afraid that there would be overhead cause I'm not sure if sabnzbd extracts the files from the temporary location to the complete location, or copies the archive files first, then extracts. Correct me if I am wrong but I believe it first moves the files to the complete location, then performs the extraction?

[shypike]

Correct me if I am wrong but I believe it first moves the files to the complete location, then performs the extraction?

Most downloads consist of RAR files that need to be extracted, in that case having two disks is better.
For simpler downloads (consisting of files that need no post-processing) it will be moving files. In that case having two disks is a disadvantage.
So determine what your average download consists of, and decide what's the best choice for you.

[danknugz]

Thanks man I want to do that, but I am still unclear as to what happens when you have rar files  . Is the extraction done from the temporary location, or are the files moved to the final location first before being extracted?

[shypike]

From the temporary location.

[danknugz]

Hey man thanks for the help, sorry to dig up an old thread, but today I noticed that sabnzbd is repairing while continuing with the next item in the queue. Is there a way to make it auto-pause the download while it repairs, so that it isn't making the hard drive repair and download at the same time?

Thanks again.

[shypike]

Config->Switches->"Pause downloading during post-processing"

[danknugz]

*facepalm*

can't believe i missed that! thanks again!!