[mythtv-users] An LVM'd drive died! What do I do...

Kevin Kuphal kuphal at dls.net
Thu Oct 27 10:40:04 EDT 2005


David Bennett wrote:

>Wow...
>
> this is stressing me out. So basically by adding another drive to my
>LVM group (which I assume means I am not "striping" I increased the
>size of my drive at the cost of now giving 2 harddrives a chance to
>fail instead of one. (shooot.... especially considering my luck with
>hard drives.)
>
>I wonder what I should do? If I buy 2 400's or 500's and run them in
>RAID, maybe that would make me feel better. How hard is it to copy the
>data off the LVM to a new hard drive? Coming from a Windows world I am
>always worried about missing hidden or system files. Is there a way to
>copy everything off the video drive onto a new drive and not miss out
>on anything?
>
>(And on another note, is a 2 disk raid even worth it? If one of the
>hard drives develops an error, will that not corrupt its partner?)
>
>What does everyone think? Help me develop the poor mans backup...
>(not only do I keep my Video files on the LVM (which I can afford to
>lose), but I also keep my main cpu backup there. That would be
>upsetting...)
>
>  
>
It's called DVD.  Take whatever you find so important that you can't 
lose it and burn the NUV files to DVD or dual layer DVD.  Me, I don't 
care if I lose some television.  I do keep my video AVI files on DVD for 
backups as well as my music. 

The problem is, RAID 1 is great, but means you have to buy twice as many 
drives and you can lose any one disk in a mirrored set before you lose 
data.  RAID 5 is great, but you can only lose 1 disk at a time and to be 
honest, the Linux tools for expanding RAID 5 sets are in their infancy 
and I just don't trust them so you might need to expand 3 disks at a 
time and then you're still left with a multiple volume problem.

Your best recovery is through backups but consider what you *need* to 
backup and then choose your backup strategy accordingly.  I don't care 
if I lose 20 hours of Clifford the Big Red Dog so I just choose to back 
up the VHS and DVD movies I have converted to view on Myth.  YMMV.

Kevin


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