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

[Steve Adeff]

On Wednesday 26 October 2005 19:43, David Bennett wrote:
> ... fortunately this has not happened (yet!) but I am preparing for the
> worst.
>
> Jarod's MythTV guide recommends LVM as an option to create nice and
> big MythTV partitions. I followed the guide and have recently added
> another 250G to my original drive with Mytbtv-users help.
>
> A hard drive failure on my Windows computer got me thinking. If one of
> the drives in the LVM group dies, what happens? Does the whole
> partition go down? Do you only lose files that were stores on the LVM
> drive?
>
> Better yet, if a drive dies, how do you replace it? DO you have to
> Shrink the LVM and do stuff with it, or just pop in a new drive and it
> automatically works?
>
> LVM seems like a great idea, but now that I have set it up, I am
> worried that 1 drive failig will result in the loss of 2 drives of
> data.
>
> Any input would be appreciated!
>
> david

noone has yet mentioned S.M.A.R.T. yet. After I went through a stint of 
loosing 2 hd's in a week's time (due to powersupply problems) I looked into 
things and found smartctl, which monitors the smart status of drives and can 
even be setup to email you when it encounters a problem. According to 
manufacturers warranty's upon a SMART pre-fail warning you are allowed to, if 
the drive is still under warranty, get a replacement. I've done this a few 
times since, once with a Maxtor SCSI drive and once with a seagate ATA drive. 
I suggest paying the extra shipping cost to receive the new drive so you can 
copy your data over. Keep an eye on the drive. I'll usually put it into a ro 
mount and if gets really bad I unplug power to it until I get a new drive. 
This is a good way to circumvent any possible issues, but for a sudden 
failure, backup is key.

Steve