--- Mike <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > After using MythTV for quite some time. I'm starting > to think I might > want a raid controller to use with my 2 hitachi > deskstars (250GB) > > I'm sort of looking at a 3ware 7506-4LP but I hear > the performance isn't > all that and its more for redudancy. I'm going for > both size and speed > since it seems a lot of the wait is in the drive, > plus I want lots of > storage. I have little faith in software raid > controllers and really > want the whole process offloaded from the CPU so it > can do things like > commflag. (hence the 3ware with good linux support) > > Does anybody have any suggestions to get the most > speed out of my 2 > drives? Also, I am not opposed to buying 2 SATA II > drives and a 3ware > SATA controller for the backend. Is it really that > big of a difference? > Things seem slow with mythcommflag running, 3 shows > recording and trying > to bring up the recorded programs from mythweb. I > plan on adding an > HD-3000 to the mix which I hear I need almost an > entire systems > resources by itself just to watch live HDTV since it > isn't HW encoded. > And I prefer not using XvMC since the only thing > I've managed to do with > it is make the picture look worse and have the > computer crash every > couple of hours with it on. > > Any suggestions on the raid card and hardware > configuration? > > Thanks > -Mike > _______________________________________________ > mythtv-users mailing list > mythtv-users@mythtv.org > http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users >
This answer does somewhat ignore the criteria of "hardware RAID", but I offer my solution. Take it for what it's worth. I wanted some extra space with redundancy, so I chose to go with a RAID-5 solution in my MythTV case. I have a Silverstone LC-10, which will hold 4x 3.5" drives, plus 2x 5.25" drives (though only one of the 5.25" drives is available externally, and it *must* be a CD/DVD-ROM type drive. I was really liking it, but I found that the case was getting very warm, to the point that during the heat wave over the summer (in California) that I had to keep the MythTV machine powered down, or at least unhook the power to the disks. Wiring was also messy, even though I was using PATA to SATA controllers on the drives (in an attempt to use SATA wires). My ultimate solution was to buy a case designed for SCSI drives, but without the SCSI wiring. I had a VIA EPIA lying around that I wasn't using anyway (I tried it out for MythTV, never found that I liked the idea of seperate frontend/backend, the EPIA didn't have enough ooomph to play some of my more intense MAME games), so I used it. I cut out a hole in the back of the case (for the connectors) and mounted the motherboard via tie-wraps. Now I've got a four drive RAID-5 running with the EPIA motherboard. I use hdparm to spin the drives down when they're not in use (which is quite often), and it runs cool and quiet. I'm using IDE drives, so the wiring is a bit of a mess, but I don't think that SATA supports the spindown feature via hdparm (although there might be some other program I don't know about, or it could have been my converters). I use the two IDE connectors on the VIA board, plus a Promise ATA-100 controller card in the PCI slot, and use Linux software RAID-5. This might seem extreme, but I had most of the components already, and I didn't mind soldering up a power switch and doing some cutting. After writing software for 8-9 hours a day, doing some tinkering around with hand tools is relaxing. :) I opted for software RAID myself because I didn't want to shell out the money for a hardware RAID card. Also, this case is somewhat small and might not have accomodated it. Plus, I didn't want SATA, since I wanted to be able to spin the drives down when they weren't in use. -- Joe __________________________________ Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005 http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ mythtv-users mailing list mythtv-users@mythtv.org http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users