From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Wols Lists Subject: Re: moving spares into group and checking spares Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2016 19:35:30 +0100 Message-ID: <57D99872.3000802@youngman.org.uk> References: <20160914092959.GA3584@metamorpher.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: scar , linux-raid@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-raid.ids On 14/09/16 18:52, scar wrote: > i'm not sure what you're suggesting, that 4x 11+1 RAID5 arrays should be > changed to 1x 46+2 RAID6 array? that doesn't seem as safe to me. and > checkarray isn't going to check the spare disks just as it's not doing > now.... also that would require me to backup/restore the data so i can > create a new array No. The suggestion is to convert your 4x 11+1 raid5's to 4x 12 raid6's. (or do you mean 11 drives plus 1 parity? If that's the case I mean 11 plus 2 parity) That way you're using all the drives, they all get tested, and if a drive fails, you're left with a degraded raid6 aka raid5 aka redundant array. With your current setup, if a drive fails you're left with a degraded raid5 aka raid0 aka a "disaster in waiting". And then you can add just the one spare disk to a spares group, so if any drive does fail, it will get rebuilt straight away. The only problem I can see (and I should warn you) is that there seems to be a little "upgrading in place" problem at the moment. My gut feeling is it's down to some interaction with systemd, so if you're not running systemd I hope it won't bite ... Cheers, Wol