On Thu, 2013-12-19 at 03:17 -0600, Stan Hoeppner wrote: > On 12/18/2013 3:12 PM, Wilson Jonathan wrote: > > I realise if it is possible its not going to be the best solution, but a > > temp stop gap... > > The primary purpose of RAID is to protect your filesystem and files > against failure of a disk in an array. The purpose of RAID6 is to > protect against a second disk failure or read error while you're > rebuilding the first failed drive in an array. By creating a RAID6 with > one missing, you've essentially created a RAID5 array, as you can only > lose one drive. > > Why didn't you simply create a RAID5, then reshape it to RAID6 when you > acquire your "4th" disk? If you'd done that you wouldn't be worrying > about "plugging this hole". I think I over thought things/was trying to be to clever :-/ > The tone of your request suggests the time frame to add the 4th drive is > now indeterminate, and you have a realization that it may possibly never > happen. This being the case, I'd suggest you backup all your files, > blow away the 'kissing' RAID6, and make a fresh RAID5 of your 3 drives. > Or a RAID10. Then format and restore. Your performance will increase, > and you won't have to worry about this missing drive in your crippled > RAID6 array. The intention was to copy the existing raid6-6drive data (the end of the new 3tb drives now holds/replaces the original 1tb drives) then copy the data across to the new raid6 (held in the first 2tb of space on the 3-3tb disks) then destroy the 6 disk raid and finally re-use the disks until a new drive can be purchased (was looking at 1-2 months time) however thinking about it again and in light of your comments I think I'll leave everything well alone and leave the 6 disk original running (with 3 new drives)... when I've installed the missing 4th disk at that point I will copy over the data, then tear down the 6 disk array, that way I will have my 2 drive redundancy should any disk suffer an early death. It will also mean that the existing 3 new disks will have had a 1-2 month workout, again allowing for 2 drive deaths in the original array. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
