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Why RAID 5 Stops Working In 2009

Posted by kdawson on from the back-'em-up-rawhide dept.

Lally Singh recommends a ZDNet piece predicting the imminent demise of RAID 5, noting that increasing storage and non-decreasing probability of disk failure will collide in a year or so. This reader adds, "Apparently, RAID 6 isn't far behind. I'll keep the ZFS plug short. Go ZFS. There, that was it." "Disk drive capacities double every 18-24 months. We have 1 TB drives now, and in 2009 we'll have 2 TB drives. With a 7-drive RAID 5 disk failure, you'll have 6 remaining 2 TB drives. As the RAID controller is busily reading through those 6 disks to reconstruct the data from the failed drive, it is almost certain it will see an [unrecoverable read error]. So the read fails ... The message 'we can't read this RAID volume' travels up the chain of command until an error message is presented on the screen. 12 TB of your carefully protected — you thought! — data is gone. Oh, you didn't back it up to tape? Bummer!"

2 of 803 comments (clear)

  1. Illin with the panicillin? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Is she illin with the panicillin?
    Is she reelin in the panicillin?
    Is it feelin with the panicillin?
    Are you steelin in the panacillin?

    Panka Panka

    Is she liable no suitifiable no not on trial but so suitifiable
    Is she viable no suitifiable pliable style is so suitifiable
    so reliable no suitifiable shes not on file but so suitifiable
    im on the dial its so suitifiable its like im liable but more suitifiable

  2. ZFS has its own issues by Anarke_Incarnate · · Score: 1, Offtopic
    I have commented on them a lot, namely the default block size for reads as well as the ARC buffer size issues that need kernel tuning to fix, but SHOULD be fixed, and after only 5 updates to Solaris 10.....

    btrfs should be an option on Linux, for those who care to go that route