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Forum Discussion
RN428 Raid 5
I have an RN428 that i want to populate with 8 10TB drives. It automatically chooses to use RAID 6. I would rather use RAID 5. Is there a way that i can specify that before it starts to build the raid 6 array or do I HAVE to let it build the RAID 6 array, THEN change it? If so, that seems like a silly way to waste a week of time.
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I would *highly* recommend keeping raid-6, with so many drives in an array, and as you can see it takes a long time to resync etc, the possiblity of multiple drive failures is higher.
No raid is a replacement for backups (meaning multiple copies of your data in separate places/devices), so you should ensure adequate backups regardless of raid mode.
If you are aware and can accept the risks of using raid 5 with 8 disks, then the answer to your question is no, you should not have to wait, just remove the existing data volume and create a new raid 5 volume.
It is a killer to have to lose out on 20TB of storage!! As soon as I turn on the RN428 with the 8 drives in place, wont it start to build the raid 6 array? Can I interrupt it and change it to raid 5? How do I do that?
when you have a second drive fail in the middle of a rebuild or expansion, then its going to be even more 'killer' to lose 70tb.
go into the volumes tab click the gear on the data volume and delete.
then create a new volume of the type and drives you desire.
you can choose x-raid which will default to the raid-6 mode and uses all drives and will automatically expand/rebuild, or you can choose a regular raid mode from the available options. After you create your raid 5 volume, then you can switch back to x-raid mode if you desire (and you used all the drives).
x-raid mode can only be enabled with a single volume using all drives.
mlknez wrote:
I have an RN428 that i want to populate with 8 10TB drives. It automatically chooses to use RAID 6. I would rather use RAID 5. Is there a way that i can specify that before it starts to build the raid 6 array or do I HAVE to let it build the RAID 6 array, THEN change it? If so, that seems like a silly way to waste a week of time.
As TeknoJnky noted, you can destroy the XRAID volume as it is being built - you do not have to wait for that to finish. So there no waste of a week of time.
Whether RAID-5 is a good idea with a volume of this size is another question. RAID-5 is certainly more vulnerable than RAID-6, so you should consider the recovery time from a volume failure.
You need to be prepared to lose your volume at any time, since even RAID-6 is not enough to keep your data safe. Whenever it does fail, you will need to rebuild the volume and restore the data from backup. That will likely take a few weeks.
Personally I am using RAID-5 - but my volume is much smaller than yours (4x6TB -> 18 TB) and it is fully backed up onto two other NAS. So I can immediately switch over to one of the backups if the main NAS fails.
Thanks all. I appreciate your input.
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