10 × 16 TB in RAID 6: the numbers
| Usable space | 128 TB (116.4 TB in Windows) |
|---|---|
| Raw space | 160 TB |
| Used for protection | 32 TB |
| Efficiency | 80% |
| Drives that can fail | Any 2 |
| Rebuild at 150 MB/s | 29 h |
| Rebuild at 50 MB/s (busy) | 3.7 days |
| Data read during rebuild | 144 TB |
| Read error risk, desktop drives | over 99% (corrected) |
| Read error risk, NAS drives | 68% (corrected) |
Rebuild
Replacing a failed drive means writing a full 16 TB drive. At 150 MB/s with no other load that takes about 29 h; on a busy array running at 50 MB/s, about 3.7 days. The rebuild reads every surviving drive: 144 TB in total.
Read errors
Reading 144 TB, the chance of at least one unreadable sector is over 99% with desktop drives (1 per 1014 bits) and 68% with NAS drives (1 per 1015). The second parity corrects it, so the rebuild finishes without losing data.
Our take
Up to about 12 drives in one RAID 6 is common. Beyond that, two RAID 6 groups (RAID 60) keep rebuilds shorter. For 16 TB drives this is the setup most administrators would choose: the rebuild takes 29 h, and the array stays protected the whole time.