[mythtv-users] Suggestions for a partition structure

[Joseph Fry]

> I am about to completely format and reinstall my combine BE/FE.
>
> It has 2x 500GB discs.
>
> So what would you do and why?  I was thinking of a partition for the
> mythbuntu install and then a partition for recordings on the main disc.
>
> and the second disc just having one partition and using it for
> recordings/videos etc

What I would do, though may not recommend it to you is create a small
MD raid partition on both disks mirror them.  Create equal sized swap
spaces on each disk.  And finally mount the remaining space on both
drives for use by mythtv.  You might need to jump through a few hoops
as most distros don't raid boot and root in an obvious manner.

Why do I mirror root?  It allows me to boot my system if either drive
fails, mirrors my database (by far the most important part of my
system), and should improve read performance where it matters most
(writes are slower, but they don't have as big an impact on
responsiveness)

I love that MD allows you to raid partitions instead of whole disks...
I take advantage of that all the time.  My current backend actually
has 3 750GB drives with a 40G partition on each mirrored for root and
boot (the ability to do a 3 way mirror is another nice thing about
MD).

What I would recommend  (since your asking this question I assume that
using MD may be a bit complicated for you), is just to create a 40GB
root partition on one drive, put a little swap on both drives, and
finally create partitions that use the remainder of both drives.
Mount the data partitions, and create sub folders for all of your
storage groups on both of them... and both locations to the storage
group definitions.  This way mythtv can balance the recordings across
both drives, and you can place videos on either one.

You could also consider just using a single drive for the active
system... and using the second drive as a backup using the much loved
rsnapshot to preserve any important media and configuration files.