[mythtv-users] LVM RAID 5 partition schemes

Milan Andric mandric at gmail.com
Thu Apr 7 17:27:55 UTC 2005


On Apr 7, 2005 12:06 AM, David Morrison <themorrisons at btconnect.com> wrote:
> Milan Andric wrote:
> 
> >I'm basically stuck on the RAID.  Since I  do not have enough data
> >*right now* to use the 3 x 300G RAID 5,  I'd like to just buy two
> >drives now and use mdadmin to
> >setup a RAID 5 with 2 missing drives and add drives as time goes on.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> Personally, I think this is a very bad idea. You can't have small with
> server sized power and capacity at a reasonable price. As most people
> have commented, you'll get noise and heat from having four disks in a
> small space. Also don't forget about the video card unless your planning
> on using the built in one on the mother board plus you'll need a pretty
> good power supply too.
> Good RAID 5 doesn't come on many of the 'on-board' controllers and most
> of them are software RAID anyway. If you want real RAID 5 then you're
> looking at a significant additional cost, plus another PCI slot for the
> board (which adds more heat). Do you really want RAID 5?

i'm planning on using the md (software) raid -- just SATA controllers.
i will probably disable the raid features in the BIOS.

> I have five disks in my mid-sized case and I can tell you that it's
> noisy enough to notice. Although some of the newer disks are a lot
> quieter than one or two I still have whirring away.
> My case is HOT! Think about where you live too, if it get's
> significantly hotter in the summer you'll need to take that into
> consideration. I've become victim to this (although it hardly get's hot
> in the UK), but basically in the summer I found my case temps rising a
> lot in the day and didn't have enough cooling.
> I now have LVM set up with two 250GB drives and that's the way I'd
> recommend you going. By the time you've filled up two 300GB disks you'll
> probably be wanting a separate back end anyway. Then you can put it in
> the garage and it can be as big and noisy as you like :-)
> If you still want to go with lots of disks, then a larger case is needed
> and try and separate them as far away from each other as possible so the
> air can get around them. (Although that 3 in 4 disk caddy looked
> interesting it's adding more fans which adds noise).
> 

likely go with this board (rather than add a promise TX4 card which costs ~$70),
i figure i can just spend a few extra $$ for motherboard with alot of
sata ports :
 Epox "EP-8RDA6+Pro" NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 Chipset 
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-123-221&depa=1

and case that can house 3 to 5 drives :
 Antec Solution Series Black ATX Mid Tower Case, Model "SLK3000-B"
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=11-129-152&depa=1

adding a good PS and large fan to the front where the drives sit should provide
the extra cooling necessary?

hopefully the noise won't be that bad.

-- 
Milan


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