RAID failure

[cryowizard]

Today my RAID controller stopped liking my data array saying the second disk is not good. Why, nobody knows - the disk itself is healthy. Who knows -- it is now rebuilding from a primary (it's RAID1 - mirror). We'll see how that works out...

UPD: Took about 3.5 hours to rebuild a 500GB drive. Healthy and happy now.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

So wait... what is the failover time for RAID1 again?

[asol55.livejournal.com]

it was me

[cryowizard.livejournal.com]

Well it's a mirror - the first disk is ok, the second is not. The array (read - the healthy disk) is visible from XP and at the same time the RAID controller is rebuilding the dead disk to reconstitute the array. How long does it take to copy over 500 gigs? Few hours. It's at 32% now.

[asol55.livejournal.com]

as far as i remember level 5 provides graceful degradation i.e. you don't really have to fail over to the new hd. so why only level 1?

[cryowizard.livejournal.com]

Are you paying for the extra hard drives, the case the houses this crap and the power they eat?

Sure RAID5 would be nice but I ain't payin' for it, ya'hear?

For me, mirror provides enough redundancy to prevent data loss since simultaneous hardware failure of both array elements is unlikely, and each carries a full working data set. Not to mention that the contents of this data array is copied daily to an external HD ;)