[mythtv-users] advise/suggestions on how to set up my drives?

[Dan Armbrust]

> sorry, I should have been more specific. I already have the OS/SQL on
> a seperate 7200rpm 40GB MB cache drive. What I'm trying to figure out
> is the best way to set up the three 1.5TB drives to be used as a
> media/recordings drive. all the recordings and DVDrips/ripped
> music/etc will go on this, so I'm interested in what will give me the
> best combination in speed for writing/reading for recordings (two
> firewire tuners one clearQAM tuner) and of course size.

I prefer the KISS approach to dealing with RAID when you are trying to
do RAID on the cheap.

Don't get me wrong, RAID has it's place, especially if you want to
spend the money for hardware that makes RAID easy.  But for cheap....

Just throw the three disks in the box.  Configure Myth with a
different recording volume for each drive, so it can spread the
read/write load out however it pleases.

Then - just set up a nightly script to mirror changed files from disk
1 ->  disk 2, disk 2 - > disk 3, and disk 3 to disk 1.  Schedule the
script to run when you aren't usually recording or watching stuff.

Now you have faster writes than you would have on raid, at most, only
a day of data loss if a disk fails, and a completely simply data
recovery path when a drive fails.  No RAID config to deal with 3 years
from now when a disk fails, and you don't remember how you configured
it in the first place.  The system can also spin the disks down
individually... if you are only recording one program, two drives can
be powered down.