[mythtv-users] Best settings for transcoding HD content to save space?

[Preston Crow]

On 05/14/2014 01:35 PM, jedi wrote:
> On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 12:32:13PM -0400, Eric Sharkey wrote:
>> On Wed, May 14, 2014 at 11:56 AM, Preston Crow
>> <pc-mythtv13 at crowcastle.net> wrote:
>>> Moving from 3TB with no data protection to 6TB or more with RAID
>> RAID is not data protection, it's high availability. If you want data
>> protection, you need backups.
>>
>> I don't feel the need for high availability, nor am I overly stressed
>> at the potential loss of recordings, so I'd advise against RAID for
>> typical MythTV installations.
>     Once you've gotten to the point where you need to aggregate multiple
> drives together in order to get more total capacity, you might as well
> "splurge" and have one be a parity drive. It's not perfect protection
> but it's better than nothing and likely will be less resource intensive
> than a "proper" backup.
>
>     Replacing a failed RAID drive is probably the simplest and least
> disruptive "disaster recovery" procedure once you start considering your
> end users and how they are likely to react to alternatives.

RAID is one form of data protection.  It protects against loss due to a 
drive failure.  Backups protect against loss due to accidental deletion 
or corruption (by user or software bug), as well as against loss of the 
entire system (due to theft, lightning, or toddler with water), but 
don't protect recent data from the loss of a drive. Both are important.  
You have to weigh the value of the data, the cost of the solution, and 
the risk of the loss.  I'm most worried about a drive loss, so that's 
where I'm going to invest first to reduce my risk.

Obviously the correct solution is to have a Symmetrix with SRDF and 
TimeFinder backing up to a secondary system off-site. Unfortunately, I 
see a few issues with this solution.  (You can get something like this 
from cloud providers, but the bandwidth isn't adequate for media files.  
I use that for /etc, /var, and /usr/local with simple tar.bz2 files from 
a cron job on a nightly or weekly basis.)