Moving the Live TV buffer in WMC8 is a PITA

[leroys1000]

Windows 8.
I picked up a 16GB flash drive at office depot for $7.99.
Good deal.
I tried every hack and suggestion on the web to move the live TV
buffer to the flash drive.
I even saw a post about changing the live tv buffer duration and
used that to track down the the DVR recording entry in the registry.
I changed the location in the registry and the same thing.
No matter what I change,when I restart the computer,everything
changes right back to the defaults.
Not that I really need to do this,but I wanted to save a little wear and
tear on my hard drive.
What a pain.

[SilverRubicon]

Why would you want to move the live tv buffer to a flash drive? A flash drive is much slower than a hard disk. Will just kill your performance and not significantly impact the life expectancy of your hard disk at all.

[richard1980]

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/wiki/index ... _TV_buffer

I don't use W8, so I don't know if the paths are correct, but the logic behind it should be correct.

[leroys1000]

A usb 2.0 flash drive is fast enough to handle the live tv buffer.
I want the buffer off the drive to stop the hard drive from running constantly.
richard1980,I tried that already also.
Windows 8 has increased security measures that is not allowing
changes in the ehome directory and other system folders.
I deleted the folder,made the changes and it said symbolic
link created.
Restart and everything is back the way it was.
I had windows 8 security in my title,but someone changed it.
I actually had to copy the ehres.dll out to the desktop and make
background images changes,then copy it back in.
It said I needed admin priviledges and I just had to click ok.

[kingwr]

I agree with SR. The LiveTV buffer is all sequential writes and will perform much better on your HDD. Plus, if your application settings are on your HDD, then your HDD won't spin down anyway as long as the EH services are recording or showing live TV. The best performance setup (IMO) is an SSD for OS and application settings and a good HDD for live TV buffer and TV recordings. Don't worry about wear and tear on the HDD -- it will likely last longer than your SSD and most certainly your $8 Flash drive.

[crawfish]

A usb 2.0 flash drive is fast enough to handle the live tv buffer.

The latest ones I've bought from Sandisk are horribly slow at maybe 4 MB/sec, which is not a lot of headroom, and while I have no proof, I wouldn't be surprised if there are episodic latencies to screw things up.

I want the buffer off the drive to stop the hard drive from running constantly.

If it's a loud drive, I can understand, but if it's longevity that is the concern, I wouldn't worry about it. The solution to a loud drive is a 5400 RPM green drive mounted with silicone grommets like you find in Antec cases like my P182. At least my two WD 2TB green drives are essentially silent, and I say that as someone who has been been into "silent computing" since forever. The noise they add to undervolted 120mm fans (600 and 750 RPM), CPU fan (380 RPM), and PSU fan that never runs and fanless GT430 in the lower chamber of my P182 sitting a couple feet from me is negligible even in the quietest room.

[richard1980]

FWIW, I've tested live TV buffer on SSD, HDD, USB flash, USB HDD, RAM, and even across ethernet to a HDD in another machine. I saw very little performance difference between all of them, though there was still a very slight difference between RAM and USB flash (not something I think would be noticeable in day-to-day use). However, YMMV depending on the specific drives being used.

[leroys1000]

Yeah,gotta work with a very tight budget and old hardware right now.
I'm still running on a dual core socket 939 system.
I decided to copy my music library onto the flash drive for a backup.
Put my windows 8 iso on there too for a redundant backup.
It copied about 5GB in around 3-4 minutes,so at least it's a fast drive.
Thanks for the responses.

[SilverRubicon]

I think you'll find the lifespan of a USB drive to be rather short if it's being used as the live tv buffer. Reading from a flash drive is basically "free" as far as wear and tear, but the memory chips have a finite lifespan when writing.