[mythtv-users] RAID suggestions?

[Nick F]

On 10/25/07, Greg Arena <gma at gmadigitaldesign.com> wrote:
>
>        I just recently bought a trio of 500 GB SATA hard disks
> that I want to put together in a RAID 5 configuration for my
> MythTV box. These will only be used for storing recordings &
> videos - I have an 80GB PATA drive in place that I'll keep there
> for the OS, MythTV software, logs, etc. I plan to use Linux's
> software RAID support - true hardware RAID was just too
> expensive.
>        I've heard mixed reports about using RAID 5 for media
> stuff. The MythTV wiki doesn't recommend it without expensive
> hardware RAID controllers, but yet I've heard people talking
> about their RAID 5 setups on this list and elsewhere. I was
> wondering if anybody has gotten something similar working and
> what settings they used (stripe size, etc.) since I've never set
> up a RAID before.


Greg,

I've been using RAID 5 for a year now with no problems.  I started with
3x750GB SATA2 drives, and expanded the array to now have 4x750GB drives.
Disk throughput has never been an issue for me - serving multiple frontends,
and I've never noticed any meaningful CPU draw (it is running with a C2D
Intel chip).  My system disk is separate (as you are proposing).

My /proc/mdstat reports:

Personalities : [raid6] [raid5] [raid4]
md0 : active raid5 sde1[2] sdd1[1] sdc1[3] sdb1[0]
      2197715712 blocks level 5, 256k chunk, algorithm 2 [4/4] [UUUU]

Good luck,
Nick
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