Romex Software Forum

If I want to save 20GB of data in about 5 minutes (recording lossless video data) with a HDD that only writes about 3.6GB per minute, with 8GB of RAM in the system.

If I set no defer-write or defer-write set to a low interval, then writing speed isn't enough, thus the recording losses data (frames). The recording looks choppy.
If I set defer write to a high interval, the recording goes fine until the cache is full, then it looks even worse than no defer-write.

Is there a way to make the HDD work at 100% capacity all the time to maximize the throutput?
For example, the software tries to write the data at 4GB per minute, then the HDD writes 3.6GB in that time and 0.4GB is deferred and written after the recording is done. That way the recording would end up fine.

Welcome to the forums, Felgest.

Your 3.6GB/min (100MB/sec) HDD seems the main problem since it can't exceed 18GB in the 5-minute limit you set. Current high-capacity (2TB+) HDDs can manage 150MB/sec so changing your HDD may be one option. Increasing your RAM to 24GB+ (allowing for 20GB cache and 4+GB system usage) is another.

A third option that might work would be to install Primo Ramdisk and set up a large hybrid ramdisk (where data over the ramdisk size gets written to HDD instead). So writing 20GB to a 5GB hybrid ramdisk should result in the first 5GB going to RAM and the remaining 15GB to HDD. I've not experimented with this so I can't make any promises, and hybrid disks don't support image files, so that first 5GB won't survive a system restart unless copied elsewhere.