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I'm planning a SoftRaid purchase to replace an ageing MacPro cheesegrater Apple RAID card (which is now non-functional), currently using RAID5.
I'm going to use SoftRaid with four new internal 1TB WD black drives in a RAID5 config.
I already boot this Mac with an SSD in one of the PCI slots, so SoftRaid would just be for the storage volume.
My question is about what happens in the future if a drive goes bad and I have to replace it.
I know the drives aren't hot swappable, so I assume the process would be:
1 - SoftRaid indicates in the monitor that a drive needs replacing
2 - I shut down the Mac, disconnect from power, remove the drive indicated and replace with a new one
3 - Reboot the Mac and I then assume the RAID would be rebuilt using the new drive?
Does this happen automatically?
There's about 700gb on this volume, so how long would that usually take before the Mac was back up and serving files?
Could the Mac serve files to the network whilst it's rebuilding?
If so, is there a speed penalty?
Any help much appreciated.
Posted : 22/08/2018 11:48 am
We have hundreds of users with this essential configuration.
Your steps are fine, except SoftRAID does not "auto" replace any disks. What you do is "initialize" the new disk, then "Add disk" and let it rebuild.
The amount of data is not relevant to how long it takes to rebuild, that depends on the size of the disks.
1TB will rebuild in a few hours, probably 2-3.
Your computer can still work while rebuilding. If optimization is set to workstation, then it will rebuild at 50% speed, if server, then 100% speed, so you can determine whether users experience any slowdown during the rebuild. (At workstation/50%, it is unlikely they notice at all, but it will take longer to rebuild.)
Posted : 22/08/2018 1:40 pm
Topic starter
That sounds great, thanks for the info.
Posted : 23/08/2018 6:21 am
