Quick raid 5 question!

[mcveigh]

If I have a raid 5 array with only 3 drives and 1 fails do I lose any/all data

 

[kjmcdonald]

No. THe RAID 5 standard can survive the failure of one disk in the Array.
You will suffer a performance hit until you replace the bad disk because
the data has to be reconstucted on the file during each access. Once you
replace the bad drive and let the RAID system know, it will begin to
reconstruct the data that belongs on the new drive. This will also slow
performance somewhat while the rebuild happens, but once it's done it
will be as if nothing ever went wrong. If you have hotswappable drive
connections, then you should be able to do all this without rebooting.

If you lose 2 drives you're SOL though. So don't wait too long to get
the first one replaced.

 

[mcveigh]

thanks!