RAID 5 Reliability - Any Nightmare Experience?
#16
I've used raid 5 arrays in business environments for many years. It's a good technology. It isn't totally safe though, and hardware failures can destroy an array. IE I've seen an array run for years 24*7*365. Then have a HDD failure. Power down, swap out the drive, power up and another drive is dead (translation, the entire array is dead, time for a restore).

You don't need a backup if the data is unimportant (IE your episodes of Sex in The City Wink ).
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#17
Can't remember the link now but someone did a (software?) RAID6 with XFS and SSD type R/W's and put it through some serious stress testing as well. Some actual real numbers you can't get easily. Now, any kind of device like that has to absolutely go through something like a voltage regulator or a UPS so the line voltage fluctuations don't stress the electronics too much over the years and lead to more errors.

http://www.google.ca/webhp?hl=en&tab=ww#...80&bih=804

Regards,
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#18
No discussion of simply running a fully redundant duplicate backup of the server? That's what I do.

Rather than buy expensive drives, I just use 2x the cheap ones and periodically mirror my server to a backup box. I keep the backup server unplugged from the wall (power, network, everything) so that if my house takes a lightning strike, the backup doesn't get cooked alongside the primary. No RAID solution is protected from this scenario.

With the price premiums the WD Reds are running right now, it is almost the same price to just double-up on your capacity using cheap(er) drives in an isolated box.

I simply grandfather drives to the backup as I grow the primary. Once a 2TB starts to approach capacity, I replace it with a 3TB drive and send the old 2TB to the backup server.

Truly irreplaceable files (pictures, documents, etc) are backed-up to various media (I have 4x redundancy on that, using the backup server, optical, and external disks).

While losing the media server wouldn't be catastrophic (it's all replaceable), it would be a giant pain in the butt. Thus the backup.

I just picked up a Seagate 3TB from NE for $127 shipped, which is about half of the cost of its WD Red counterpart.

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#19
(2012-06-01, 01:15)TugboatBill Wrote: I've used raid 5 arrays in business environments for many years. It's a good technology. It isn't totally safe though, and hardware failures can destroy an array. IE I've seen an array run for years 24*7*365. Then have a HDD failure. Power down, swap out the drive, power up and another drive is dead (translation, the entire array is dead, time for a restore).
So... you're recommending raid 5 because you've experienced catastrophic unrecoverable failure with it? Smile
For me, the striping on raid 5 makes it a non-starter for storing my media. I don't want all of my drives spun up simultaneously while watching a movie - unnecessarily noise/heat/power.

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#20
(2012-09-11, 01:04)teaguecl Wrote:
(2012-06-01, 01:15)TugboatBill Wrote: I've used raid 5 arrays in business environments for many years. It's a good technology. It isn't totally safe though, and hardware failures can destroy an array. IE I've seen an array run for years 24*7*365. Then have a HDD failure. Power down, swap out the drive, power up and another drive is dead (translation, the entire array is dead, time for a restore).
So... you're recommending raid 5 because you've experienced catastrophic unrecoverable failure with it? Smile
For me, the striping on raid 5 makes it a non-starter for storing my media. I don't want all of my drives spun up simultaneously while watching a movie - unnecessarily noise/heat/power.

Not because I've seen unrecoverable failures (duh), because it is the best solution in some situations.
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