Parity Initialisation

[Ayman Altounji]

Using the Array Controller 4200 on my Windows 2000 system, I set up an Array A mirrored of 12GB and an Array B RAID 5 of 52 GB.

The Array A works fine, but I have to wait almost 8 hours for a "Parity Initialisation" to finish. The way I saw this is that when entering into the Array Configuration Utility, a yellow screen would appear, telling me that "performance may suffer while the parity initialisation is going on". However, to take so long suggests to me that something is not working correctly.
Comments welcome.....

[Ayman Altounji]

That is normal, everytime I start from scratch on a server it tells me that after the array is configured.

[Ayman Altounji]

Your are correct. The array controller is working as designed. When a new logical array volume is created, the array controller must perform an integrity check of the the entire logical array volume and create the data parity bytes for every sector on the array of drives. With a logical array volume of 52 GB, this process is going to take a while. A whole day is normal. While the integrity check is performed the array controller will be 20% to 30% slower in performace. This is why you get the performace message.