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RAID 5 Failure, worth rebuilding?

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  • 02-08-2012 12:12pm
    #1
    jester77
    Registered Users Posts: 11,262 ✭✭✭✭


    I've 2 NAS servers (both RAID5 configured) sitting at home that are 99% full. I purchased a new box recently and had planned on moving all the stuff from the 2 old servers onto the new this weekend.

    Last weekend I shutdown the old servers to move the new server into place. Yesterday the servers performed their monthly disk checks and I came home to see that 1 of the disks had died and the server was running in degraded mode. Maybe the moving around at the weekend did some damage.

    I copied off some docs and pictures and shut it down until the weekend. There are a few hundred gigs of videos still on it that I don't want to lose.

    Would I be better leaving it in degraded mode and copy off the videos? Or should I chance rebuilding the RAID array with a new drive and hope that none of the other drives die during the rebuild?

    Which option would give me the better chance of getting the videos off it?


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    #2
    n0brain3r
    Registered Users Posts: 919 ✭✭✭n0brain3r


    What sort of controller have you hardware or software?

    When you boot do you see any SMART data from your drives ?

    The biggest problem with RAID5 is that typically all the drives have the same run time, where produced at the same time in the same factory so have an identical mean time before failure. One has died so another may not be far behind.

    I would try save my data first as rebuilding the array will put the remaining drives to the test as most controllers will do it sector by sector regardless of data being stored there or not.

    If another fails during a rebuild you loose everything but if while copying you'll only loose what hasn't come across so prioritise the data and good luck!!


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    #3
    jester77
    Registered Users Posts: 11,262 ✭✭✭✭jester77


    It's a software controller. This is a really old terastation box with a very simple UI and I don't have access to its console, I will just use it as a backup device now.

    One of the disks died a year ago and I replaced it, so only 2 of the original disks are still in the drive once I replace the damaged drive.

    The device did its monthly disk check yesterday and that is when this disk got knocked out of the array due to bad sectors. So I'd be reasonably confident that the other 3 disks are ok as they passed. But in saying that I'm thinking I might just take the chance and start copying off the videos and then rebuild the array.

    If something goes wrong during the rebuild I lose everything, whereas if something goes wrong during the copy then I will at least have recovered some of the videos.


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    #4
    n0brain3r
    Registered Users Posts: 919 ✭✭✭n0brain3r


    Yeah best to get what you can off it so. Regards the different disks once you replace this failed drive you potentially have 3 different vendors drives running 3 different firmwares if its a backup of a backup then ok plus if it's an old chassis it's life is limited and should it fail you've to find another to load your drives in to recover the data


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