[mythtv-users] Recording and Archive Storage Approaches

[Joel Turner]

I'm interested in upgrading my storage capacity on my Myth box.  After a 
month and a half , my hard drive is nearing capacity.  I currently have 
one PATA drive for OS and one 250GB SATA drive, XFS file system for 
recordings.  Tuners include one PVR-350, one Firewire, and HD over QAM. 
When I did my original install, I set up an LVM volume so adding drive 
capacity to the original volume should not be an issue.  After reading 
through the archives, it appears that there are many different thoughts 
on how to approach this. Relevant hardware is:

Silverstone LC01
AMD Athlon 3500
Samsung 250GB
EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra
Seasonic S12 430W

The Silverstone has  6 3.5" bays, two of which are populated.  The EPoX 
will support 4 SATA drives without additional hardware.  I realize that 
this is only TV, but after going through two hard drive failures on a 
Tivo SA1, I am interested in being able to have some redundancy.  When 
you are three weeks behind on 24 and your hard drive crashes, spouses 
get very upset.  However I do not care if a show from Animal Planet or a 
sporting event is lost.

So, I'm leaning towards doing the following.  I will add an additional 
120GB drive that I have on hand to the 250Gb to add some more recording 
space. I'd like to establish a RAID 5 storage archive.  I plan to 
purchase 3 additional 250GB or 300GB drives.  The concept is that shows 
that I really care about can be flagged, transcoded and then moved to 
archive storage to be watched and deleted or retained. Other shows will 
remain on the recording drive and will auto-expire if necessary.  I do 
realize that RAID 5 is not a substitute for backup.  I will back up 
selective recordings to DVD.

My questions are:

1) Has anyone else approached recording and storage in this manner?
2) Can I run multiple LVM volumes?  I'd like to run LVM over the RAID 
archive so it can be expanded.
3) Is it possible to move a show from the recording volume to the 
archive and still have it display in active recordings? 
4) Will a RAID 5 array have enough speed to serve up HD content?

Your comment and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

--Joel