[mythtv-users] OT Hardware RAID 5 non-Recommendations

Brad Templeton brad+myth at templetons.com
Sun Dec 17 20:57:05 UTC 2006


It is also worth considering not doing RAID at all.   Seriously.
Yes, drives are failing more often -- though if you keep them cool,
that improves a great deal.   Of course, keeping them cool requires
fans you may not want in your living room.    I believe you can get
a box that goes in your 5.25" bay zone in larger cases with a 120mm
fan, you can certainly get 92mm fans for such boxes.

If it's a backend, not in the living room, put in the big, slow fans
for good airflow and low noise.

RAID as a backup protects you from drive failure, but it does not
protect you from the far more common cause of loss, which is
accidental deletion.   It also doesn't protect against the house
burning down or similar troubles.

You may consider that videos are not as much in need of backup
and that you would rather than 1.5x or 2x the storage than have
backup.   Videos can often be recovered over time (shows get run
again) or for those inclined, there are sources on the net where
you might question the ethics of using them for obtaining videos,
but not for recoving ones you legitimately had.

However, barring that, you may want to consider that
extra drives (as needed for RAID 5) require extra power, heat and
noise.  About 10w for a typical drive, which here means $10 per
year or $30 over the 3 year life of a drive.     Thus a 750mb
drive may be cheaper than two 400gb drives over time.  Not
counting the fancy controller.


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