[mythtv-users] Storage space question

[Bruce Richardson]

On Mon, Jan 21, 2008 at 06:29:58PM +0200, Ismo Tanskanen wrote:
> I switched from just using a bunch of drives to a RAID 5 array in 
> November. In December, just after I left for 2 weeks out-of-town over 
> Christmas, one of the drives in my RAID array crashed. The array itself 
> stayed up, with no loss of data, until I got back to town two weeks 
> later and was able to replace the drive. 8 hours later, the new drive 
> was completely synched and the array was again protected from a drive 
> failure. I am sold on RAID 5, and consider the loss of use of one drive 
> in the array to be a worthwhile trade-off.

A note of caution about RAID 5; as long as a system stays up, as yours
did, then it can recover well but it is actually much more vulnerable
than other RAID configurations if there is a complete failure of the
array (e.g. sudden component failure or power failure.)  Commercial
systems try and guard against this with battery-backed caches and you
can give some protection to your home system by making sure both your PC
and disk array (if they are separate boxes) are on a UPS.  The only real
protection against storage failure, though, is a backup to a completely
separate storage system.


-- 
Bruce

I see a mouse.  Where?  There, on the stair.  And its clumsy wooden
footwear makes it easy to trap and kill.  -- Harry Hill