[mythtv-users] Faster CPU and more RAM in SD frontend or backend?

[George Mari]

Kevin Kuphal wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 11:40 PM, Johnny Russ <jruss at mit.edu> wrote:
>>> I agree with making the P3 the backend, although 384MB is on the low
>>> end, it should be OK.  It depends on how many tuners you have and
>>> whether you will have anything else running on the box.
>> I just have one tuner and I don't plan on adding anymore any time soon.
>>
>>> Stuffing 4 drives in the case, make sure there is  good airflow over
>>> those drives.
>>>
>>> With 2x160GB and 2x250GB drives, will you make a 4x160 RAID5 or RAID0?
>> Yeah I was a little worried about heat. Maybe its time to cut a fan hole in
>> the side of my case. I think I am going to go with RAID5. The 160 GB drives
>> are getting old and I imagine one of them is going to go eventually
> 
> Don't bother.  Myth can use each drive independently for storage in a
> storage group.  If one dies, there is zero risk of it taking out any
> other drive or the filesystem stretched across multiple drives.  Sure,
> you lose whatever was on that drive, but it's just TV and I find the
> possibility of losing everything if the RAID array fails is far
> worse...
> 

I agree using storage groups is probably easier to setup and maintain 
than RAID5.

But I have found Linux software RAID to be very robust and reliable.

My decision to use RAID5 stems from the fact that there are programs 
that I record that are shown only once, and are never rerun.  I cannot 
buy a DVD of the program after the fact, because they don't sell them. 
If I was using storage groups, and the drive the show was on died before 
I got to watch it, that would be bad.  Granted, that's a pretty remote 
possibility - to some people, not worth the extra effort to setup RAID5.

I started using RAID5 before storage groups were available, and granted, 
I would get similar benefits and reliability from storage groups, but 
for me, I don't see a reason to change at this point.