12 × 14 TB in RAID 6: the numbers
| Usable space | 140 TB (127.3 TB in Windows) |
|---|---|
| Raw space | 168 TB |
| Used for protection | 28 TB |
| Efficiency | 83% |
| Drives that can fail | Any 2 |
| Rebuild at 150 MB/s | 25 h |
| Rebuild at 50 MB/s (busy) | 3.2 days |
| Data read during rebuild | 154 TB |
| Read error risk, desktop drives | over 99% (corrected) |
| Read error risk, NAS drives | 71% (corrected) |
Rebuild
Replacing a failed drive means writing a full 14 TB drive. At 150 MB/s with no other load that takes about 25 h; on a busy array running at 50 MB/s, about 3.2 days. The rebuild reads every surviving drive: 154 TB in total.
Read errors
Reading 154 TB, the chance of at least one unreadable sector is over 99% with desktop drives (1 per 1014 bits) and 71% 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 14 TB drives this is the setup most administrators would choose: the rebuild takes 25 h, and the array stays protected the whole time.