[vdr] Re: Default video dir

[Emil Naepflein <Emil.Naepflein@philosys.de>]

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 22:06:23 +0200, Lauri Tischler <lwgt@iki.fi> wrote:

> If we are talking about terabytedisks, then that means hardware
> scsi-array-box or fibre-channel with bunch of satadisks or fibredisks
> and within the array you have hotswap spares.

That is total overkill for a privat use system. Just take a bunch of
inexpensive IDE/SATA disks and use MD driver. It runs reliable since
nearly 5 years.


> There are _only_ two ways of having 'single large disk',
> buy large enough disk, unfortunately today limit seems to be 300GB,
> if you want more get the array mentioned above.
> Of cource considering single disk failure, you are better off by
> buying the array in any case, like...
> 
> http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?productId=115&familyId=6

I use a Promise SX6000 and and onboard IDE and RAID controller. But
instead of using the on-board RAID functionality I use md. The SX6000
gives 6 independent IDE channels and onboard IDE/RAID gives another 4
independend channels. I never use two disks on a channel in order to
avoid 2 dead disks on a channel error. I never lost a recording through
this. But I lost recordings because of corrupt ReiserFS and therefor
avoid having all data on on disk partition.

This gives total flexibility regarding disk upgrades. I started with 3
80 GB disks and now have 8 250 GB and 2 300 GB disks. The downtime for
upgrade was minimal just to plugin the disks. The upgrade migration was
handled during normal operation.

The flexible link structure of VDR allows me to place recordings where I
want without loosing the flexible directory structure.

Emil