[mythtv-users] Consequences of drive failure

[Mike Perkins]

On 02/12/12 15:18, Larry K wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 2, 2012 at 7:12 AM, Mike Perkins
> <mikep at randomtraveller.org.uk>wrote:
>
>> On 02/12/12 09:22, Phill Edwards wrote:
>>
>>> On 02/12/2012 6:25 AM, "Mike Perkins" <mikep at randomtraveller.org.uk>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Okay. So I've discovered that one of the two 500Gb drives in my recording
>>>>
>>> storage group is failing, enough that I'm getting jumps during playback
>>> and
>>> indecipherable error messages in dmesg.
>>>
>>>>
>>>> I've ascertained that there is enough auto-expirable files in the system
>>>>
>>> that I can run on one drive until the newly-ordered ones arrive next week,
>>> so I've pulled the SATA cable. It's not comfortable, but doable, and the
>>> alternative is writing fresh recordings to a dying disk.
>>>
>>>>
>>>> My question is, how does the system react when you take half the
>>>>
>>> recordings away? They are all still present in the database, but is there
>>> any indication that they are or are not available for watching?
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> I think there is a script you can run somewhere which you can run and it
>>> will prompt you to sync database with whatever recording files exist. I
>>> can't remember what it's called but someone else will surely know.
>>>
>>>   Well, fine, but my intention is to try and recover what I can off the
>> dying disk when the new ones arrive. (I won't do this from within mythtv,
>> but on another box.) I'll simply copy from the two old disks to the two new
>> ones and then install the new ones at the original mount points. With any
>> luck mythtv might not even notice :)
>>
>
> Have you considered some flavor of RAID?  This will protect you from
> annoying and inevitable drive failures.
>
It's TV. We'll survive. This way it is relatively easy to fix a problem at the 
slightly increased risk of losing something. With RAID I'd have double the power 
consumption, more complexity building the system, more noise and there would 
/still/ be a risk of losing something.

My only mistake, really, was not having a suitable spare in the box.

-- 

Mike Perkins