[mythtv-users] LVM RAID 5 partition schemes

[David Morrison]

Milan Andric wrote:

>I'm basically stuck on the RAID.  Since I  do not have enough data
>*right now* to use the 3 x 300G RAID 5,  I'd like to just buy two
>drives now and use mdadmin to
>setup a RAID 5 with 2 missing drives and add drives as time goes on.
>
>
>  
>
Personally, I think this is a very bad idea. You can't have small with
server sized power and capacity at a reasonable price. As most people
have commented, you'll get noise and heat from having four disks in a
small space. Also don't forget about the video card unless your planning
on using the built in one on the mother board plus you'll need a pretty
good power supply too.
Good RAID 5 doesn't come on many of the 'on-board' controllers and most
of them are software RAID anyway. If you want real RAID 5 then you're
looking at a significant additional cost, plus another PCI slot for the
board (which adds more heat). Do you really want RAID 5?
I have five disks in my mid-sized case and I can tell you that it's
noisy enough to notice. Although some of the newer disks are a lot
quieter than one or two I still have whirring away.
My case is HOT! Think about where you live too, if it get's
significantly hotter in the summer you'll need to take that into
consideration. I've become victim to this (although it hardly get's hot
in the UK), but basically in the summer I found my case temps rising a
lot in the day and didn't have enough cooling.
I now have LVM set up with two 250GB drives and that's the way I'd
recommend you going. By the time you've filled up two 300GB disks you'll
probably be wanting a separate back end anyway. Then you can put it in
the garage and it can be as big and noisy as you like :-)
If you still want to go with lots of disks, then a larger case is needed
and try and separate them as far away from each other as possible so the
air can get around them. (Although that 3 in 4 disk caddy looked
interesting it's adding more fans which adds noise).