www.makemkv.com

How many DVD drives can one HDD handle during a bulk rip process?

Hardware I intend to use:
(3) 24x DVD Drives
(1) 250GB Single Platter 7200rpm HDD (Seagate ST3250318AS)
(1) Intel G530
(1) ECS H61H2-M2
(1) 2x2GB DDR3

Peak bandwidth per DVD drive appears to be <20MBps, with an average ~14MBps. With three DVD drives, the HDD would need to write at ~60MBps.

Online reviews have shown the HDD to have the following specs:
4KB Random Write: ~2MBps
512KB Random Write: ~60MBps
Sequential Write: ~115MBps

How does MakeMKV write multiple data streams to the HDD? With a 1GB buffer per DVD drive, are the streams written sequentially in large fragments (i.e. 100MB) or will the head be thrashing around, writing data as its received? Would increasing the read buffer help? Are multiple HDD's necessary? Thanks for taking the time to read.

- ThePolarSky

ThePolarSky wrote:How does MakeMKV write multiple data streams to the HDD? With a 1GB buffer per DVD drive, are the streams written sequentially in large fragments (i.e. 100MB) or will the head be thrashing around, writing data as its received? Would increasing the read buffer help?

Read buffer size can be changed in preferences, HDD write buffer size is always 128 MB, MKV files are written in ~50MB fragments and then few bytes have to be overridden in previously written fragment, so the head will move a lot. Increasing read buffer will help in a sense that when MakeMKV stalls on slow HDD, it tries to read as much data as possible into read buffer hoping that HDD stall is temporary and all the data will be dumped faster later on.

Ever thought about using a batch instead of simultaneous rips? I guess it will be slower but apart from less demand on your hardware you'd could do it unattended as well.

I get good performance to an SMB share with four BD Drives. It peaks near the end at about 140Mbytes/sec with BDs (Running an 802.3AD gigabit pair into a Samba NAS). The main problem is the slightly inconsistent read reliability with about 1 disc in 20 with riplock disabled but this is a drive issue and nothing to do with MakeMKV.

Makemkv coudl really do with a couple of options to help the simul-rippers, reducing the disc detect thrashing with multiple MakeMKVs open and an intelligent shared write buffer would be excellent.

Of course everyone would like to see their suggestions implemented but I guess there are fairly few simul-rippers out there.