Hard Drive filling up

[WHALEMAN]

I have started datamining full tilt almost 24 hours a day on the max tables allowed. I am filling up my hard drive. Can I get an external hard drive to help. What would I want on the external drive, my pokertracker and the file I save to? I always believed external drives were back ups and as such would not really save room on my main drive. Thanks

[SamIAm]

External drives will be way slower than internal drives. Even USB2 or Firewire will be slower than internals. If you do get an external drive, you'll be happier moving your documents (read once, edit in RAM, save when you're done) than moving your pokerdata (constantly read & write harddrive).
-Sam

[Suigin406]

yea, to elaborate on what sam said...u wouldn't want to read and write to ur hard drive constantly if u can...not only is it slower and a hassle, but no need to burn the life of the HD either...

[jnalpak]

another option for you would be to purchase an external SATA that has a PCI card add on, this will give you the quick read/write you are looking for with regards to datamining....if its a laptop then follow SAMs info

[LuckyTxGuy]

I've been thinking about doing some data mining on FT myself but not to the extend that the OP is. I was curious if database bloat was something I really needed to worry about. I was just thinking of data mining maybe 5-6 tables for a few hours every day. Would I be better off starting another database, just for observed hands?

I can go over to PT's forums and check into this, I just saw this thread and thought someone might know.

[BiPolar_Nut]

I'd suggest using a PostGRESQL database and upgrading your PostGRE to 8.1 which, as of the last PT update, is now supported and it supposed to be faster than 8.0 [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

My database isn't big enough nor do I play enough to notice the difference, but I'm sure dataminers are cheering. There's also a school of thought that a separate database for each game/limit is a good idea. I set mine up that way, but again....low use here w/ grand aspirations once a few other financial things are squared away (which I can't take care of on nanos lol....damn I wish I found 2+2 a year or two earlier!)

[whatsgoingon]

Don't Forget to Vacuum your database!

Later,
WGO

[CORed]

If your computer is a desktop machine, just get a big (several hundred GB) internal drive and slave it to your primary drive. It's not hard to do and it will perform much better than an external with Poker Tracker. I f you have a laptop, this will be more difficult or impossible.