Best practice for BA, CF, USB and swap file

[Chocolate]

Hi all,

I'll try to explain what IMHO is the best practice to handle BH, BA, CF, USB and swap file, and also epg data store as well as system backups.

My goal was to know exactly where every single piece of data was stored and the most important to avoid unnecessary HDD accesses, I may be a little paranoid, but I only wanted to have the HDD as Movies and events storage, but I do not want the system to have access to the HDD just when I change a channel, and the epg function wants to save information on the disc.

Let's start:

What do we need:

- Black Hole Pure Flash with Barry Allen included (2nd may)

- Black Hole 0.10

- An USB stick, mine is 512 MB, make sure it is high speed, here we want to store:
System backups,
Epg data,
And activate the swap file.

- A CF card, I got a SanDisk extremeIII 2GB, here we want to have:
Barry Allen installed
Images for multiboot.

How to proceed:

Here a roughly explanation of “how to” but it is much better explained in the guides you can download here at pimps. But just to remember the main steps.
If Pure Flash and BH0.10 is already on CF,
skip this section ------------------------------------------------------------------
Skip
Make sure you plug an empty CF card in the slot; the CF card will be formatted or erased during installation of Barry Allen.
Why has the CF-Card to be empty? Because if BA detects an installed version of Barry Allen on the Card, then BA will perform an upgrade and not a full installation.
Flash your box with pure flash, as this will install Barry Allen for you

Once Barry Allen is executed from CF, we set the location to install Images to CF.
Press Green Panel-->Barry Allen-->Setup ******--> Location where to store images select CF.
Now with DCC we copy the image we want to install to the CF, and perform the Installation of BH_XX or others Image.
End skip
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Switch OFF the box and plug the USB stick, if you think you will leave the stick permanently on the box, then use the sockets on the rear part.

- Formatting the USB Stick
Green Panel-->Barry Allen --> Erase CF or USB, format USB

Now we want to redirect the backups and the epg data to the stick
To leave the HDD as long as possible in standby mode.
Blue Panel --> Settings --> Global settings --> Path to save epg file = /media/USB/epg.dat

… And also to create a swap file of 32MB
Blue Panel --> SETTINGS --> SWAP file settings:
Place = USB
Size = 32MB
Enable at start up.

… now the system backups shall also go to the USB stick, therefore press:
Menu --> setup --> Software manager --> Advanced options -->
Choose >Backup location = USB
And also to select which files and folders shall be stored (a marked all of them)
The backup itself takes then about 3 minutes.

Now when the “spinning atoms symbol” appears on the top left corner of your screen, you will notice that the HDD does not start at all.
When you perform a system Info, you will see, that the swap file is rather occupied, this does not mean that the swap file is not being used, as the system requires the swap file storage space only for a very short time before it goes on with it’s duties.

So we have on CF.
Barry Allen
All the Images for multi boot

On USB
Swap file
Epg data
System backup file

I hope this little guide will help you at least in the first days when you are new to DM8k, and of course this will not replace at all, the valued information you can download here at pimps.

If you detect a wrong information in this thread, which could be misunderstood by newbie, so let me please know, in order to be changed, or deleted.

Special thanks to Oldfart, Crabber, Giga, Sonic1... an all who helped me to set the box up, with their endless patince...