6 × 8 TB in RAID 5: the numbers
| Usable space | 40 TB (36.4 TB in Windows) |
|---|---|
| Raw space | 48 TB |
| Used for protection | 8 TB |
| Efficiency | 83% |
| Drives that can fail | Any 1 |
| Rebuild at 150 MB/s | 14 h |
| Rebuild at 50 MB/s (busy) | 44 h |
| Data read during rebuild | 40 TB |
| Read error risk, desktop drives | 96% |
| Read error risk, NAS drives | 27% |
Rebuild
Replacing a failed drive means writing a full 8 TB drive. At 150 MB/s with no other load that takes about 14 h; on a busy array running at 50 MB/s, about 44 h. The rebuild reads every surviving drive: 40 TB in total.
Read errors
Reading 40 TB, the chance of at least one unreadable sector is 96% with desktop drives (1 per 1014 bits) and 27% with NAS drives (1 per 1015). Nothing is left to correct it, so the affected file, or on some controllers the whole rebuild, fails. These are worst-case datasheet rates; real drives usually do better.
Our take
With 8 TB drives we would pick RAID 6. 7 drives in RAID 6 give the same 40 TB and survive two failures, or a read error during a rebuild. Keeping 6 drives, RAID 6 gives 32 TB. RAID 10 with the same drives gives 24 TB, faster writes and shorter rebuilds.