[mythtv-users] MythTV backup

[Steve Smith]

On 02/04/2008, Steve Smith <st3v3.sm1th at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 02/04/2008, David Segall <david at segall.net> wrote:
>  >
>  >
>  >  John Drescher wrote:
>  >  > On Wed, Apr 2, 2008 at 9:57 AM, David Segall <david at segall.net> wrote:
>  >  >> Yesterday I thought I might have lost all my MythTV data. Fortunately,
>  >  >>  the fix was simple but it made me wonder how I could protect my set up
>  >  >>  from catastrophic failure.
>  >  >>
>  >  >>  Operating a redundant fall back computer seems like overkill for this
>  >  >>  application but I don't see any other solution to ensuring that MythTV
>  >  >>  satisfies the SOAF [1] factor.
>  >  >>
>  >  >>  How do you ensure that your fried MythTV can be restored in time for the
>  >  >>  nightly news and you have not lost the latest episode of the unmissable
>  >  >>  series that screened last night when you were out?
>  >  >>
>  >  > I have the os disks on raid 5 (although I am eventually going to
>  >  > remove that so I can spin down the disks to save power). And I have a
>  >  > cron job that makes a backup of the mysql database each night to yet
>  >  > another disk (not part of the raid). Every once and a while I email
>  >  > myself that file to my 6.5GB gmail account.
>  >
>  > So what happens if your motherboard is fried by a power supply failure
>  >  which was my fear yesterday? I thought that the disk drives would
>  >  probably be OK but I knew that I could not find an exact replacement for
>  >   the motherboard and I feared that I would need to do a complete
>  >  reinstall of the OS. I was not confidant that a reinstall could preserve
>  >  the existing data. I also needed to provide a TV set to watch tonight's
>  >  TV programs.
>  >  --
>  >
>  > David
>  >
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>  >
>
> David,
>
>  Linux is pretty tolerant of hardware changes (unlike certain other
>  operating systems which refuse to even boot up, and then require
>  "re-activation"). Perhaps if it's not too expensive you might keep a
>  spare video card, as this appears to be on the most fiddle-prone areas
>  of building a myth system.
>  If the IDE/SATA interafcae of your new motherboard is not exotic it
>  should boot straight up.
>
>  Cheers
>
>
>  Steve
>
On a related note... HOW do you backup 500gb of data these days? Is a
spare drive really the most cost effective method?

Cheers
Steve