[reppans]

Hi folks, newbie here that recently converted from Windows to Mac. Just wanted to ask a general hard drive wear and tear question for my 2.16 Core Duo MBP.

I just picked up a Elgato EyeTV Hybrid for watching air-free HDTV (wow... is all I can say). I was thinking about recording HDTV shows on the MBP and watching them at my leisure - on my 45min train commute to work, for example. However, recording HD video is very disk intensive, a one hour show will use about 6gigs... a couple of shows... well that's a lot of disk read/writing.

I have the disk space, for now at least, but I'm concerned about the intensive and constant disk read/writing to basically just watch a TV show once, then toss in the trash. A Mac ProCare guy mentioned that constant writing and deleting huge files may create disk fragmentation issues, not to mention additional wear and tear on the drive. Also the default setting of the TV program (eyeTV) is to use the hard drive as a 2gig live buffer (for live pause, replay, etc) - I've change that to 400meg RAM buffer to reduce hard drive use. Finally, the train I ride is pretty jiggly - is this environment hard on the drive head/disk to be constantly reading while jiggling/shaking (which also would apply to listening to iTunes on the train)?

What do you guys think... stick to a regular TIVO/VCR and baby my MBP? I could care less if a TIVO/VCR failed because TV is just entertainment/luxury but my MBP is quickly becoming a necessary tool.

[gooser]

i have a humax brand tivo and dvd recorder. very easy to put tv shows on dvd. blank dvd's are relatively cheap and of course you would have your own re-runs. just an option as i don't know the answer to your question.

[mduell]

The drive in the MBP will be fine. You bought the computer to use it to enhance your life, not to sit on the shelf.

Even if you do brick the hard drive in 2 years, a new one is only $100ish.