[mythtv-users] RAID suggestions

[Joe Votour]

--- Mike <stuff at dustsmoke.com> wrote:

> After using MythTV for quite some time. I'm starting
> to think I might 
> want a raid controller to use with my 2 hitachi
> deskstars (250GB)
> 
> I'm sort of looking at a 3ware 7506-4LP but I hear
> the performance isn't 
> all that and its more for redudancy. I'm going for
> both size and speed 
> since it seems a lot of the wait is in the drive,
> plus I want lots of 
> storage. I have little faith in software raid
> controllers and really 
> want the whole process offloaded from the CPU so it
> can do things like 
> commflag. (hence the 3ware with good linux support)
> 
> Does anybody have any suggestions to get the most
> speed out of my 2 
> drives? Also, I am not opposed to buying 2 SATA II
> drives and a 3ware 
> SATA controller for the backend. Is it really that
> big of a difference? 
> Things seem slow with mythcommflag running, 3 shows
> recording and trying 
> to bring up the recorded programs from mythweb. I
> plan on adding an 
> HD-3000 to the mix which I hear I need almost an
> entire systems 
> resources by itself just to watch live HDTV since it
> isn't HW encoded. 
> And I prefer not using XvMC since the only thing
> I've managed to do with 
> it is make the picture look worse and have the
> computer crash every 
> couple of hours with it on.
> 
> Any suggestions on the raid card and hardware
> configuration?
> 
> Thanks
> -Mike
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>
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> 

This answer does somewhat ignore the criteria of
"hardware RAID", but I offer my solution.  Take it for
what it's worth.

I wanted some extra space with redundancy, so I chose
to go with a RAID-5 solution in my MythTV case.  I
have a Silverstone LC-10, which will hold 4x 3.5"
drives, plus 2x 5.25" drives (though only one of the
5.25" drives is available externally, and it *must* be
a CD/DVD-ROM type drive.

I was really liking it, but I found that the case was
getting very warm, to the point that during the heat
wave over the summer (in California) that I had to
keep the MythTV machine powered down, or at least
unhook the power to the disks.  Wiring was also messy,
even though I was using PATA to SATA controllers on
the drives (in an attempt to use SATA wires).

My ultimate solution was to buy a case designed for
SCSI drives, but without the SCSI wiring.  I had a VIA
EPIA lying around that I wasn't using anyway (I tried
it out for MythTV, never found that I liked the idea
of seperate frontend/backend, the EPIA didn't have
enough ooomph to play some of my more intense MAME
games), so I used it.  I cut out a hole in the back of
the case (for the connectors) and mounted the
motherboard via tie-wraps.

Now I've got a four drive RAID-5 running with the EPIA
motherboard.  I use hdparm to spin the drives down
when they're not in use (which is quite often), and it
runs cool and quiet.  I'm using IDE drives, so the
wiring is a bit of a mess, but I don't think that SATA
supports the spindown feature via hdparm (although
there might be some other program I don't know about,
or it could have been my converters).  I use the two
IDE connectors on the VIA board, plus a Promise
ATA-100 controller card in the PCI slot, and use Linux
software RAID-5.

This might seem extreme, but I had most of the
components already, and I didn't mind soldering up a
power switch and doing some cutting.  After writing
software for 8-9 hours a day, doing some tinkering
around with hand tools is relaxing.  :)

I opted for software RAID myself because I didn't want
to shell out the money for a hardware RAID card. 
Also, this case is somewhat small and might not have
accomodated it.  Plus, I didn't want SATA, since I
wanted to be able to spin the drives down when they
weren't in use.

-- Joe



	
		
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