Posts: 64
Joined: Nov 2010
Reputation:
0
Hi everyone,
Im in the process of rebuilding the HTPCs in the whole house because they are all made up from junk parts ive had laying around and its starting to show..
So everything is sorted apart from storage really.
They will all be clients running from a central server so wont need much storage space.
Now the only thing im stuck on thinking is what would be better.
OpenELEC running from a USB.
OR
Windows 7/8 running from USB BUT with XBMC set up and running from a ramdisk. (with XBMC as shell)
The only reason is because I cant seem to find out if OpenELEC sets XBMC up on a ramdisk or if you can make that happen with some tweaking (as far as ive looked I cant find out)..If you can / id does then I would just go with OpenELEC
Any suggestions?
Posts: 3,544
Joined: Mar 2010
Reputation:
119
Openelec puts the whole operating system into ram. User data is kept on the HDD.
Posts: 191
Joined: Aug 2011
Reputation:
0
Not to hijack OP but somewhat related...
Running Openelec on an SSD seems like a tremendous waste of resources. Would I be just as well off running it from a USB drive or SD card performance wise?
Posts: 3,544
Joined: Mar 2010
Reputation:
119
They all stay on the hdd.
Ive never run OE off a usb drive but I dont think it would be too bad... OE is designed to run off a usb drive. I think that boot times would be similar as 150 or so mb of files has to be read off them.. but Im not sure about library updates/accessing fanart etc. Theres no harm in trying, OE is easily transferable to a new hdd.
Posts: 278
Joined: Feb 2008
Reputation:
2
touser
Senior Member
Posts: 278
Just so you know, unless you plan to reboot the windows machines often XBMC develops a terrible playback lag/stutter after windows has gone a while without a reboot. It's extremely annoying.
Posts: 843
Joined: Jul 2010
Reputation:
13
Unless you experienced problem with OpenELEC, or need more activity (browing web , netflix , skype, etc) or need to edit some specific config OpenELEC is the way to go.
It's good for normal usage. Have been used it for about a year. Limited in configuration since most part of it are read-only. You can use userdata folder and autostart.sh but that's pretty much bout it. Recently I 've problems with sound dropout & video playback since 3.0rc4 and still have. So I switched to XBMCBuntu / WIndows version for now. But it could be hardware specific bugs, so tried it and see if you like it or not.
Never has problem with Windows version though.
Posts: 1,124
Joined: Jan 2011
Reputation:
9
T800
Posting Freak
Posts: 1,124
I use to have this problem, haven't had it for a long time. Probably since Eden.
Posts: 64
Joined: Nov 2010
Reputation:
0
Its going to be xbmc only. And xbmc will control sleep etc. But obviously want to get the best performance so that's why thinking just minimal windows with xbmc on a ram disk. Xbmc as shell also so really won't ever see windows..
Anyone tried this?
Posts: 3,544
Joined: Mar 2010
Reputation:
119
2013-04-09, 21:39
(This post was last modified: 2013-04-09, 21:44 by teeedubb.)
I haven't tried a ram disk but I dual boot both windows and openelec off a ssd and OE definitely performs better, is more robust and a hell of a lot easier to setup. If all your doing is using xbmc try OE first.
I've seen this stutter after resume with windows.. I used event ghost to restart xbmc on resume to fix it. It was a while ago now and i dont know if the same happens with current releases.
Posts: 64
Joined: Nov 2010
Reputation:
0
Yes but I don't want to have to purchase a whole SSD, that's the main reason of this question really.
Posts: 3,544
Joined: Mar 2010
Reputation:
119
Never tried booting windows off a usb drive but the thought scares me.. Like I said before, OE is designed to be run off a usb drive so Id try that before anything else. What hardware are you using?
