raid 5 rebuild time????

[cuti7399]

After a lot of research, i decided that i will put together a raid 5 machine for file server. So the question i got is:
1. how long does it take to rebuild if any of the drive fail?
2. in what castrophic disaster will I loose data? (will schedule backup frequently)
3. do you suggest that i backup to dvds or ext. hard drive.

Thanks for all the help

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

1) Time depends upon the size and speed of the drives. Doing 4 75gb SCSI 10k rpm drives in RAID 5 took about 10 hours to initialize the array.
2) For RAID 5, catastrophic failure from 2 failed disks could result (and it sucks--I've had this happen due to a bad PSU). Failure could also result if the controller went bad, but that is remidied by getting a new controller of the same type.
3) IMHO, never do a primary backup to DVD. Definitley backup to hard drive or tape. Secondary backups can be done on DVD, but I'll never do optical backup again. (The time that the RAID 5 array failed, I recovered about 3% of my data from my DVD archives).

 

[cuti7399]

thanks for your input

is raid 5 file size limited to 2gig or does it vary by controller?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: cuti7399
thanks for your input

is raid 5 file size limited to 2gig or does it vary by controller?

RAID 5 itself has no size limitations. Maximum array size is dependent upon the controller and the operating system that will be used. I'm guess that you meant 2tb, correct? Usually RAID controllers will have the fact that they can handle arrays over 2tb in their specs. What controller and OS will you be using?

 

[cuti7399]

What controller and OS will you be using?

this controller. Not sure what to use for the OS, is XP Pro ok? My question about the file size is that, with raid 5, can I format the hard drives and create the array using NTFS format? because I have a NAS device which is formatted to Fat32 and that limit the file size to 2gb. However, the iso files are >2gb

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: cuti7399

What controller and OS will you be using?

this controller. Not sure what to use for the OS, is XP Pro ok? My question about the file size is that, with raid 5, can I format the hard drives and create the array using NTFS format? because I have a NAS device which is formatted to Fat32 and that limit the file size to 2gb. However, the iso files are >2gb

Oh, I understand. Yes, you can format the disk however you wish. Once the drivers are installed, your operating system will see the RAID array as a single disk. There also exists 2tb (2,000gb) limits that exist as well, and I thought that is what you were referring to, sorry. And XP Pro would be fine if you wanted to use NTFS. Just be aware of the 48-bit LBA issue while you are installing XP.