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* Disk I/O error while rebuilding an md raid-5 array
@ 2010-02-08 23:23 Dawning Sky
  2010-02-09  0:04 ` Greg Freemyer
                   ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 16+ messages in thread
From: Dawning Sky @ 2010-02-08 23:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: linux-raid

Hi,

I have some trouble with my md raid-5 array.  It has four 500GB drives
(sdb1-sde1).  sde started giving some SMART error (Pending Bad
Sectors).  So just to be safe, I decided to replace it.  I declared it
to be faulty and removed it from the array and added a new drive and
the rebuilding was automatic.  But before the rebuilding can finish, I
got an I/O error from sdb1 and it was declared faulty by md.

Now I have two faulty drives and things don't look good.  However, I
was able to add the sdb back to the array and md seemed not mind and
still reported "active sync".  At this point I shut down computer and
decided to clone sdb with clonezilla so that I can have a good sdb to
finish rebuilding sde.  Not sure if it will complete without I/O
errors.  It appears clonezilla is using dd and the speed is extremely
slow (~5MB/sec) and it says it's gonna take 1 day to clone the 500GB.

The only reason I'm not in a total panic mode is that I did a back up
before doing all this.  Now I'm keeping my finger crossed that my
backup drive won't die.  In retrospect, I should have just shut down
the computer and cloned sde instead of letting md to rebuild the
array.

Any suggestions on the best way to proceed at this point are highly
appreciated, especially on the scenario that I won't be able to clone
sdb.  Is there any way to avoid building a new array?

Regards,

DS

PS, if in the end I have to build a new array, I'll probably go with a
raid 6 instead.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 16+ messages in thread
* Re: Disk I/O error while rebuilding an md raid-5 array
@ 2010-02-09  0:25 russ
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 16+ messages in thread
From: russ @ 2010-02-09  0:25 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Greg Freemyer, linux-raid-owner, Dawning Sky; +Cc: linux-raid

I had no idea the odds were that bad.  Time to switch to zfs...

Russ
------Original Message------
From: Greg Freemyer
Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org
To: Dawning Sky
Cc: linux-raid@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Disk I/O error while rebuilding an md raid-5 array
Sent: Feb 8, 2010 7:04 PM

>
> PS, if in the end I have to build a new array, I'll probably go with a
> raid 6 instead.

Agreed, someone recently posted that for a raid-5 composed of 1TB
drives the odds of a rebuild failure are 1 in 67 even if the remaining
drives are within spec.  (ie. the unrecoverable bit error rate is
slowing succumbing to the ever increasing size of drives.)

You have 500GB drives, but you have 3 left to rebuild from, so that's
1.5 TB your trying to read.  I'm not sure how the original calculation
was done, so your odds of failed rebuild were either 1 in 134 or about
1 in 42.  Either not very good for something that is supposed to
protect your data.

Greg
-- 
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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 16+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2010-02-09 19:28 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 16+ messages (download: mbox.gz follow: Atom feed
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2010-02-08 23:23 Disk I/O error while rebuilding an md raid-5 array Dawning Sky
2010-02-09  0:04 ` Greg Freemyer
2010-02-09  0:45   ` Dawning Sky
2010-02-09 10:22     ` Jon Hardcastle
2010-02-09 11:57   ` John Robinson
2010-02-09 17:43     ` Dawning Sky
2010-02-09 19:28       ` Mikael Abrahamsson
2010-02-09  1:23 ` Dawning Sky
2010-02-09  4:24   ` Wil Reichert
2010-02-09  4:26     ` Steven Haigh
2010-02-09  4:37       ` Wil Reichert
2010-02-09  4:20 ` Dawning Sky
2010-02-09  6:57   ` Stefan Hübner
2010-02-09  7:39     ` Dawning Sky
2010-02-09  8:05       ` Mikael Abrahamsson
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2010-02-09  0:25 russ

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