[mythtv-users] Network Drive Storage Questions and others.

Robin Hill myth at robinhill.me.uk
Tue Sep 19 22:06:29 UTC 2006


On Tue Sep 19, 2006 at 03:41:00PM -0500, Douglas Wagner wrote:

> Ok, so i'm REALLY starting to look into this and quickly.  Couple more
> questions for all of you:
> 
> Debating between going hardware raid 5 and just a bunch of non raid disks.
> 
> I'll start with the questions:
> 1) Can you convert from Raid 1 (Mirroring) to Raid 5 without loosing/moving
> the data?
Yes.  I'm not sure that it's generally offered as a standard option, but
it is doable.  If you have a mirrored pair and want to go to a minimal 3
disk RAID-5 setup, you can drop one mirror and run the array degraded,
then create a 2 disk degraded RAID-5 array, copy the data, then drop the
mirror and hot-add the remaining disk into the RAID-5 array.  That'll
certainly be doable in software RAID, though for hardware RAID it'll
depend on the card allowing the creation of degraded arrays.

> 2) Can you add disks to a Raid 5 without having to move data off the
> Raid/Reconfigure the Raid (i.e. can you add the disk in place)
Most modern hardware RAID cards offer this.  Very recent versions of
Linux software RAID also offer this option.   It can take a while
though, and will degrade performance while it's rebuilding.

> 3) What Raid card would I want that is Fedora RedHat compatable (i'm not
> against another distribution, I just know RedHat like the back of my hand
> now) for HARDWARE raiding (software raid in Linux has caused me NO END of
> troubles)...IDE or SATA would be fine...SATA pref.
The only one I've used is the 3ware card - I've got a 9500 but the 9550
would be the better option nowadays.  The driver's in the standard
kernel, so it certainly should work on Fedora.  They aren't cheap cards
though, and I'm not sure they're the best performing (I seem to recall
reading a comparison where they came out pretty average).

> 4) If I go with simply a bunch of disks like mentioned above what kinds of
> SATA Cards would I want to go with?  Anything to stay away from as far as
> support through Linux/Fedora?
I've not heard of any problems - I think things are a lot more standard
than with PATA.  I've not really looked though, as I've not needed an
addon card yet.

> 5) For HDTV, should I be looking at Gigbit Ethernet to appropriately stream
> data over the network or can I get away with 100BT?
> 
I'd've though 100BT would be plenty - I seriously doubt they can
broadcast at bitrates anywhere near that.  It depends on what you've got
already though - GBit isn't much more expensive if you're buying new kit
anyway.

Cheers,
        Robin
-- 
     ___        
    ( ' }     |       Robin Hill        <myth at robinhill.me.uk> |
   / / )      | Little Jim says ....                            |
  // !!       |      "He fallen in de water !!"                 |
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