[mythtv-users] Thoughts on a reliable (backed up) mythtv system

[Jay R. Ashworth]

On Tue, Jul 18, 2006 at 01:59:04PM -0700, Brad Templeton wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 18, 2006 at 11:55:38AM -0700, Marco Nelissen wrote:
> > >I believe the best form of backup, while more expensive in disk
> > >cost than RAID, is remote mirroring.   At least to another computer
> > >on the same LAN, and even better to a disk in another building.
> > >Mirroring with short-term keeping of deleted files, as well.
> > 
> > But as you say: the worst consequence of drive failure is missing a
> > TV show, so why even bother? TV is not *that* important, is it?
> 
> Correct.   But we've seen discussion of people keen to build RAID
> arrays for their myth boxes and other forms of backup.

Indeed, but for reasons other than the ones you mention, I think, Brad.

> DVRs are of course wonderful but they also create a number of "throw the
> remote at the tv" moments because of the way they work.   Things
> that were never a problem with live tv -- shows running long, listings
> being off in certain ways, lineup changes, downtimes, temporary signal
> outages (which could convince myth not to record at all) -- can get
> you very mad with a DVR.    And of course  DVR failures, be they
> hardware or software caused.
> 
> So this is what leads people to look for backup.

No they don't.  Unless, by 'backup', you mean "a VHS deck running at
the same time as the box".

Those are all things *which cause a DVR not to record a program
{completely,at all}.  Backing up already recorded material is
orthogonal to that set of problems: it fixes "I keep 14 series-years of
my favorite shows on the box so I can hunt actors, lines and scenes
down when I want to $ODD_TV_GEEK_ACTIVITY.

>                                                   The reason I think
> RAID is wrong direction is that the vast majority of the problems I
> have experienced have been not caused by bad hard disks, even though I
> did have a hard disk go bad in my Myth box once (lost a couple of shows,
> salvaged the rest.)  Far more shows have been lost to accidental
> deletion, bugs etc.

Whether RAID is important to you depends a bit on whether you're using
LVM.  Recovering from that sort of failure is much more complicated
(though one of the magazines (LJ, I think) had a piece on that in the
last 3 months.

I continue to hope for Myth to support multiple video store
mountpoints, though I don't know how well that would interact with the
New LiveTV approach -- which I don't like, because, like another
poster, it means you have no real way to tell "how much free space
there is" -- important to Archivers.

But, yes: Archivers really do want a way to make the program store
Reliable.  I'm hoping BluRay jukes will get cheap really quickly.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
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