Question on Raid 5 array initial creation times

Question on Raid 5 array initial creation times

[Dylan Distasio]

I wanted to check to see if anyone could provide a rough estimate of
how long a RAID 5 initial build should take under mdadm.

I am creating a RAID 5 array with 5x1TB Western Digital Black 7200RPM
SATA drives on the following system:

Ubuntu 8.10 / ext3 filesystem on array and OS drive
1 gig of PC3200 RAM
AMD Athlon 64 3200+
Nforce4 motherboard

I am getting a minimum speed of approximately 14000K/sec with an
estimated finish time of roughly 19 hrs from now.

Is this a reasonable speed for creating a RAID 5 array with mdadm?

Thanks.

Re: Question on Raid 5 array initial creation times

[Big Wave Dave]

On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 8:58 PM, Dylan Distasio <interzone@gmail.com> wrote:
> I wanted to check to see if anyone could provide a rough estimate of
> how long a RAID 5 initial build should take under mdadm.
>
> I am creating a RAID 5 array with 5x1TB Western Digital Black 7200RPM
> SATA drives on the following system:
>
> Ubuntu 8.10 / ext3 filesystem on array and OS drive
> 1 gig of PC3200 RAM
> AMD Athlon 64 3200+
> Nforce4 motherboard
>
> I am getting a minimum speed of approximately 14000K/sec with an
> estimated finish time of roughly 19 hrs from now.
>
> Is this a reasonable speed for creating a RAID 5 array with mdadm?
>
> Thanks.

I actually did a similar setup recently, and it was very similar
timing.  I'm not sure if it should have been faster/slower, but I can
confirm I saw the same thing.

Dave

Re: Question on Raid 5 array initial creation times

[Bryce]

Big Wave Dave wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 8:58 PM, Dylan Distasio <interzone@gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> I wanted to check to see if anyone could provide a rough estimate of
>> how long a RAID 5 initial build should take under mdadm.
>>
>> I am creating a RAID 5 array with 5x1TB Western Digital Black 7200RPM
>> SATA drives on the following system:
>>
>> Ubuntu 8.10 / ext3 filesystem on array and OS drive
>> 1 gig of PC3200 RAM
>> AMD Athlon 64 3200+
>> Nforce4 motherboard
>>
>> I am getting a minimum speed of approximately 14000K/sec with an
>> estimated finish time of roughly 19 hrs from now.
>>
>> Is this a reasonable speed for creating a RAID 5 array with mdadm?
>>
>> Thanks.
>>     
>
> I actually did a similar setup recently, and it was very similar
> timing.  I'm not sure if it should have been faster/slower, but I can
> confirm I saw the same thing.
>
> Dave
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>   
I guess it depends on how your HW is configured
I've a 5x1Tb raid5 setup and that took ~ 2hr 40 min (@~72Mb/s)
I dunno what your disk IO topology is but it sort of sounds like you're
maxing out the bus IO bandwidth assuming you're sharing the disk IO with
other cards.. I dunno, video/tv card/sound whatever.

Phil
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