[mythtv-users] Large Drive setup for myth

[jack snodgrass]

I use mythtv for HD recordings. The HD shows take up a lot of space (
100 gig for 4
football games ) and I might not watch some shows for several days /
weeks. I like to
keep ALL copies of some shows but I may not watch them for 6 months.

So... I end up with data that I can classify into 'active' and
'archive'. I am planning on
splitting my 1.5 tera-byte LVM drive into smaller, physical drives. (
LVM scares me ) .
Another issue I have besides LVM is the noise / heat caused by the
drives that make
up my LVM partition.

To splip up my 1.5TB LVM partion, I am going to change it to something like
/opt/store1
/opt/store2
/opt/store3
/opt/store4
etc where these are phyical drives. I will use autofs to mount and unmount
the drives as needed. If the system doesn't access /opt/store1 for 60 seconds
it will be unmounted. I've used autofs for a while and I think it will work fine
for this. autofs will have the 'active' stuff mounted and available for
immediate access. The 'archive' stuff will be unmounted. When the data
is needed, autofs will mount it. There will be a few second delay while
the drive is mounted, but I can live with that.

What I haven't done and what I plan on looking at is running hdparm on
the drives once they are automonted ( or setting up a BIOS timer or
a drive setting ) to spin down the drives when they are unmounted. I think that
this will reduce the heat and noise made by the drives.

Assuming that I can get this /opt/storeX stuff set up like I want with the
autofs and spining down the drives after they have been unmounted,
how do I get mythtv to cooporate? Currently, I have /mnt/store. Everything
that mythtv does goes on with /mnt/store. How can I make use of
multiple /mnt/storeX ( or /opt/storeX ) partitions?

Thanks - jack