2 drive failure on RAID-5

[Bob Zelin]

And dare I ask what drive array you are using ? And what SAS Controller card are you using ?

When I used Seagate drives, I had this exact same thing happen to me. No more Seagates for me.

Bob Zelin

[Eric Hansen]

hey bob

no, i learned my lesson with Seagate. this RAID is a ProAVIO/Enhance Tech enclosure, Hitachi Saturn drives, and an ATTO R380 card.

ATTO Tech support helped me get the volume back up so i could copy all the media off. those guys rock! i replaced the 2 drives that failed and turned that particular volume into RAID-6. so the volume is now 5.46TB instead of 6.37TB, but the RAID-6 helps me sleep better at night. as we finish projects on the other volumes, i’m going to change them to RAID-6 also. we have 4 volumes currently. i might even merge them into 2. our plan was for 4 edit bays initially, thus the 4 volumes. but now 2 of the bays have turned into a Pro Tools suite, and a finishing/color correction/transcoding suite. so maybe we’re better off with 2 larger volumes instead of 4 smaller ones.

e

Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv

[Olivier Jean]

Hi Bob,
I’m surprised to see that you do not trust Seagate drives anymore,
dare i ask if you used enterprise or desktop models?

We been using enterprise Seagate 1TB with 99% of the raid we’ve sold (infortrend),
and the failure rate has been almost nil.

I have to admit that Seagate had some firmware issues about 8 months ago and we had to update a lot of them.

I have to say we didn’t venture into the 1.5TB.

I remember asking most manufacturer @NAB last year and most of them used Seagate or Itachi.

Regards
Olivier Jean
Video Sales Consultant
Apple Certified Trainer Final Cut Pro 7
Powermedia Systems
Sydney Australia

[Dan Leery]

Personally I’d go with raid-6. This does indeed sound like a heat issue, as the failure rate goes up dramatically as heat increases. Raid-6 is only one more drive than raid-5, and although you may incur a slight performance hit over raid-5 for writes, random read performance may improve slightly. At any rate, the single extra drive is worth the cost of keeping your data safe imho.
Dan
https://www.storageplatter.com

[Neil Sadwelkar]

There’s this article I remember reading sometime about how, when RAIDs get past a certain size (in Tb) the chances of more than one drive failing simultaneously get higher.

I too have experienced this with old RAIDs – like 5 years old. We invest in RAID 5 with the impression that data is safe from drive failure.

But, in old RAIDs when drives get old, the chances of them failing simultaneously seems to get higher. I guess one needs set a life for a RAID as soon as one gets it, and after that time, consider every additional day a bonus.

———————————–
Neil Sadwelkar
neilsadwelkar.blogspot.com
twitter: fcpguru
FCP Editor, Edit systems consultant
Mumbai India

[Eric Hansen]

Neil says: I guess one needs set a life for a RAID as soon as one gets it, and after that time, consider every additional day a bonus.

sage advice. i personally operate under the assumption that all drives will fail – are you prepared if a random drive in your facility failed RIGHT NOW? i have all my non-RAID systems backed up to a Crash Plan server, and extra drives sitting next to the RAID ready for swapping. at first i thought the manufacturer’s warranty period was a good indicator of a drive’s life. but my experience is that it’s not. i have a G4 tower running on its original factory drive, and i’ve had a few server-level hard drives fail within a month.

through all these installations, i’ve noticed that very few take environmental factors into consideration. a small production facility would never think about a “server room”. i’ve never been able to install a system in an ideal environment. the closest one is an Xsan that’s in a basement. the Xsan pretty much takes care of the heating for the facility in the winter. during that installation we budgeted for a rack refrigerator (very cool unit that runs about $5k – looks like a Coke cooler). but the basement stays cool enough that the fridge wasn’t needed.

during the construction of the building for my most recent SAN, i went over the needs for the server room a few times with the contractors, and they just never seemed to get it. their solution was to create a closet with a 1 foot vent at the top, and just allow convection to take over. this is part of the problem being out in the boonies where a “server room” is place where waitresses hang out. now they’re back in there (and can finally feel the heat this system puts out) and talking $3k+ for a dedicated A/C system.

e

Eric Hansen – http://www.erichansen.tv