Using 4/300gb harddrives as one.

[lanceluck]

I have four 300gb harddrives set up on my htpc. How can I set them up so that BYTV see them as one drive to record to. Is raid 0 the way to go or is there a better way? Thanks for any help.

[Jakesty]

Raid 0 I think is limited to 2 drives, and its referred to as stripe. Raid 5 has very good speed, and redundancy, but you will lose one drive due to the parity bit that is created so that if one drive fails, the others will continue to work. You could also do an EXTENDED partition or JBOD (just a bunch of disks). Theres no redundancy, but you get full capacity of all the drives. You configure it in disk manager of Windows (diskmgmt.msc from the start run command). Your drives are first set to dynamic, and then you can create the raid stuff you're looking to do. In fact Dymanic is needed for all forms of raid on a windows pc unless you go with a HD card.
You didn't state what Windows platform you have, but since it's probably XP, just remember that you can't mirror the boot c: partition. On 2000 server you can.
Jake

[pvrguy]

I would not recomend JBOD because if one fails, you'll lose everything. I had JBOD and switched to 4 single independant drives with recording folders on each - one disk for TV that I keep up with, one for new shows, one for kids shows and one for movies.

It helps with fragmentation as well.

Anything I am concerned about losing is ShowSqueezed to WMV and moved to an external drive.

[gjunky]

I agree with PVRGUY. Using JBOD or disk spanning across four drives makes the risk for a drive failure to large for loosing ALL you data. If you can afford it, I would recommend a RAID-5 controller. This way all your data is safe, the slight performance hit is taken by a separate piece of hardware and if you ever need to reload your OS, your drives will still be in tact.

-gjunky

[Crooze]

You can use more than 2 drives in a RAID 0 setup. I had 2 300 gb drives set up in a RAID 0 config and it was OK. I did have some issues while recording 2 HD streams while trying to watch another from the same drive. I reverted back to having them set up as separate drives and changed any of my recording jobs that happened at the same time to record to the separate drives. So far this has worked out well.

[Cal]

Go with Raid 5. There are no performance issues and you get the protection you need.

I had a drive just recently go bad. Not my BTV system but it was a new drive in a Raid 5 on another system. Got it replaced and it rebuilt itself. No data lost.

Raid 0 is faster but Raid 5 is not slow. Your not going to have an issue Recording. Mine can record 4 shows while I watch something else. Speed is not an issue.

You have 1/2 the capacity with Raid 0. Raid 5 gives you 1 less drive then your total. Your case, the capacity of 3 of your 4 drives.

(n-1)*s where n = number of drives and s = sizes of smallest drive in the raid.

[ClamsTheCat]

Why use RAID at all? Keep all the drives separate and have the files moved automatically to the other drives once they showsqueeze.

[Jakesty]

Originally Posted by pvrguy

I would not recomend JBOD because if one fails, you'll lose everything. I had JBOD and switched to 4 single independant drives with recording folders on each - one disk for TV that I keep up with, one for new shows, one for kids shows and one for movies.

It helps with fragmentation as well.

Anything I am concerned about losing is ShowSqueezed to WMV and moved to an external drive.

I agree. Is there a way to have one tuner for instance my HD recordings to go to one drive and other tuners to go to another drive/folder? A per tuner or type of show recording basis? My guess might be to run a task which moves jobs on a scheduled basis.
thanks, Jake

[Terminal]

Originally Posted by Jakesty

I agree. Is there a way to have one tuner for instance my HD recordings to go to one drive and other tuners to go to another drive/folder? A per tuner or type of show recording basis? My guess might be to run a task which moves jobs on a scheduled basis.
thanks, Jake

Not by tuner, but you can by series. I basically balance my recordings across two drives. I have one folder on each and set different series to record to each of the two folders. So have all shows go to the default, and set all your HD shows to go to the other folder, but you have to do it show by show not by tuner.

[Jakesty]

Originally Posted by Terminal

Not by tuner, but you can by series. I basically balance my recordings across two drives. I have one folder on each and set different series to record to each of the two folders. So have all shows go to the default, and set all your HD shows to go to the other folder, but you have to do it show by show not by tuner.

Ok thanks for the tip, I split my recordings up, and unfortunately HD is just not recording without stuttering or being jerky. CPU utilization is very high and is probably the problem. I can turn everything off and still see Util > 95% and this is especially when I have problems. I even turned off the Guide from automatically downloading.
I'm going to have to reinstall the OS and BTV. I'll first try an upgrade to 4.6, but I have a feeling this most likely won't make a difference.

[tscales]

I/O isn't your stuttering problem, at least it wasn't in my case. I could record 4 concurrent HD recordings to a single SATA150 drive.

HD shouldn't cause high CPU utilization during records either. It's just writing straight to disk.

What's eating the CPU?

[rugby]

Upgrading to 4.6 might take care of your issues. You might consider a RAID 5 card, if you have SATA drives then 3Ware makes great cards. RAID 5 writes parity to all of the drives so if you lose a drive then you don't lose everything and can rebuild parity.

[tscales]

I don't understand Raid-ing small drives.

Get the 750Gb Seagates and skip Raid. They're VERY fast and big.

Love my six.

[cannen]

Originally Posted by tscales

I don't understand Raid-ing small drives.

Get the 750Gb Seagates and skip Raid. They're VERY fast and big.

Love my six.

- 4 250Gb drives in a RAID 5 should give you about 750Gb of usable space and cost ~$320.


- 1 750Gb drive costs between $289-400.

With a loss of a drive in the RAID 5 setup, you put in another drive, rebuild the RAID and keep all of your data. Having just a single 750Gb drive and losing it would really suck.

I don't really see the benefit of not having a RAID aside from the fact that you don't have to house multiple drives. Besides that, when you need more space, then you have to start spreading your data out across mulitple drives.

[rugby]

Cannen, you forgot the price of the RAID card unless you're using a motherboad that supports RAID 5. Do most motherboards support that?