[mythtv-users] question about RAID

[Steve Adeff]

On Monday 09 January 2006 19:58, chris at cpr.homelinux.net wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 09, 2006 at 10:03:50AM -0500, Steve Adeff wrote:
> > I was under the impression RAID 0 was the fastest RAID, but has no data
> > protection? Is there no way to get RAID 0 to use more than one drive?
>
> A RAID-0 array with only one drive in it would be pointless, but
> possible.  The mdadm tool will allow you to create RAID-0 arrays using
> an arbitrary number of disks.  The failure of any one disk would kill
> the entire array, of course.

oops, I meant more than 2 drives...

but your point about a single disc failure does concern me a little, didn't 
really think of it this way....

So if I have 3 drives available, I can go with RAID0 but lose one drive and 
the whole array is lost.

RAID5 will let me recover, but I loose some speed. But it sounds like, from 
what I've read by some users, that they're able to get a good amount of write 
speed from RAID5 with 3 drives, and I wouldn't have to worry about data loss. 

If I can add drives in after initial creation, I could add in more of my 
320gig drives I have with other media on them, increase write speed a bit and 
not worry about losing the other data as well.

The wikipedia page has some great links at the bottom for those interested.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redundant_array_of_independent_disks

-- 
Thanks for the help folks!
Steve