Linux LVM question

[Reel]

I have a 120 GB hard drive (ext3) in my mythtv box right now and I picked up a new 160GB hard drive. From what I understand about mythtv, it only can store to one partition. I'd like to combine the 120 GB and 160 GB hard drives into one partition using LVM. Is this possible to do without losing the data already stored? Are there any better alternatives to consider that would allow me to combine them without losing the data?

 

[Steelerz37]

an LVM is really nice....i used it in my mythtv until i discovered if it crashed i needed to reformat the LVM (jfs) to recover it and be able to mount it (i think i know why it wasnt letting me mount but havent been able to test a solution). But it may be possible to setup the lvm without losing data. I would try this, initally setup the lvm with the empty harddrive. do the formatting then. Then you should be able to either just add the second drive to the lvm with the data already on it, or copy the data from the non lvm drive to the lvm drive, then add the second drive to the lvm. The best aspect of the LVM with mythtv is that you can transparently add storage space and make no changes to your applications (mythtv), this leads me to beleive that you wont lose data on the lvm when adding a drive to it. If you can make the LVM work the jfs or even reiserfs, i reccommend it. When deleteing large files from the ext3 partition my live tv would freeze up for 3 or 4 seconds at a time. JFS is supposed to be much much faster. When i get my second tuner card i am going to try to setup the lvm again with jfs.