[mythtv-users] drive configuration dilemmna

sonofzev at iinet.net.au sonofzev at iinet.net.au
Tue Mar 29 04:59:56 UTC 2011


Hi All, 

My current RAID that I have been using for Myth recordings as well as my music
and video library is coming to End Of Life (well not really), however a recent
drive failure and replacement of the original 750GB drive (1 of 4 in RAID 5
configuration) .. with a 2TB drive (although only using 750GB of it so far) is
making me rethink my drive configuration strategy... especially as my 1.5TB
allocated for videos and music is full. 

I have 3 tuners configured to record up to 2 streams off the same multiplex...
Although the most I can perceive being used in our house is about 4 streams with
up to 2 of those being HD.. (1080i MPEG in Australia)... Surprisingly my 4 disc
RAID 5 does seem to handle about that amount of recording (highly tuned xfs
filesystems that defrag nightly).. Given that the newer larger drives seem to
fail more frequently, I am considering converting the current RAID 5 to RAID 6
and adding 2 additional drives 

The first big question I need answered is, is RAID 6 in a configuration with 6
drives fast enough to handle my recording requirements. The only benchmark tests
I have been able to find have been with 16 drives.

I know that my alternative (and recommended on the site) is to have non RAID
disks dedicated for recording.. My issue here is economy (both power and wasted
space). .. I have found that 300GB allocated for recording is more than enough
..(especially thanks to mythnuv2mkv)... To get the required recording
performance, I would probably need 1 disk per tuner (2 streams per disk).... So
there would be 3 drives utilised with a very large amount of space unused... It
is possible for me to do this, but I would prefer to have a RAID with an lvm
partition used for recording and the rest for library... 

Are there any other configurations one could suggest.. I have space for 8 drives
(actually 10 but 2 are for the OS in RAID 1 configuration).. However, I do want
to use it in the most economical way possible.. 

Regards

Allan 




 








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