[mythtv-users] Recording directly to RAID

[David Engel]

Is anyone recording directly to RAID?  If so, what type/size, how many
simultaneous recordings and how well does it work?

I'm currently using 3 independent drives for recordings.  The primary
reason to use independent drives has been to spread in-progress
recordings across multiple spindles.  It's fairly common for me to
have 3 or 4 simultaneous recordings and 6 is not unheard of during
some busy parts ot the year.

While my drives currently aren't on death's door, they are a few years
old now and I have had a handful of scares in the last few monoths
where various drives (or controllers) have gone wonky.  Fonrtunately,
the wonkyness has only been temporary and I haven't lost anything of
real importance.  Still I'm spooked enough to seriously consider
adding some redundancy.

The two configurations I'm primarily considering are either a 4-disk
RAID6 array or a pair of 2-disk RAID1 mirrors.  While the RAID6
configuration should be more reliable, in theory, I'm leaning toward
the RAID1 configuration.  One big reason, and the reason for this
email, is the increased seek load on all drives with RAID6 when 4 or
more recordings are in-progress.

David
-- 
David Engel
david at istwok.net