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General discussion

RAID5 reorganization

Nov 29, 2011 2:29PM PST

I have a doubt regarding RAID5 reorganization. Suppose we have a RAID5 group consisting of 6 disks in a storage system. Suppose, one disk (call it d1) is unreachable i.e the disk component does not fail but some component (for example, some network cable) to reach that disk has failed. Although the data in d1 is valid, the data in d1 is inaccessible. In this scenario, will the reorganization will start or some field repairperson will try to repair/replace that component? Replacing a component seems to take less time than reorganization because reorganization is very costly with respect to time . Also, data in d1 is valid (so just repairing that component will make everything fine).

Discussion is locked

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And all this is done behind the scenes in a RAID controller.
Nov 29, 2011 2:32PM PST

Adaptec did this for years. The better systems send you an alert and then you hot swap in the new drive and it's very automatic.

HOWEVER you see folk today try to do this with software and it's not that good.
Bob

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component repair/reorganization
Nov 29, 2011 2:44PM PST

you mean "reorganization". But, replacing the failed component by a new one seems to be more easy when the disk component i.e data is valid. Because RAID5 reorganization may take long time and there is chance of experiencing latent-sector error during reorganization.

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Here it takes no time at all.
Dec 1, 2011 8:34AM PST

All this occurs on-the-fly and with no loss of access.

I can only guess you are using some PC Software RAID?