Inititialization of new logical drive on a RAID 5 array

[Francois Menard]

Does someone knows how to calculate the time required for the init. of 2 x 18.2GB drives on an existing array of 12 x 18.2Gb (about 180Gb @ 92% full)?

It spent about 1 1/2 weeks on low priority and 1 week on medium, it's still going (according to the Compaq Array Configuration Utility) and I have no way to know where it's at.

The drives are accesible; I've created a new patition on the newly available space and I can't detect any performance issue.

Anyone knows what's going on?

[ernst limbrunner]

hi francois

with large arrays initialisation can take a very long time.

i simply assume you have the most current firmware and drivers.

the init process is NOT dependent on the percentage of how much of the disk is used. the smart controller works on a sector based physical level and does not know how much data you have.

so there are basically three reasons for a long init time:

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1) heavy access (priority settings will have no influence on init time - only on rebuilds and expansion/conversion)

2) background consistency checks (these start when you have LOW disk activity)

3) firmware and driver version problems

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i am a hp trainer and have heard of this problem quite often --- it can take days .... - but no one has reported problems with data so far

so HP should publish information about this - as far as i know there is nothing. i had access to internal hp information until a few months ago and have never ever seen a paper on this issue.

best regrds
ernesto

[Prashant (I am Back)]

Hi,

Open ACU (array Configuration utility and at the bottno of that it will show the rebuilding progress and status. so we will know what the array status is or anyother problem presist there.

Regards,
Prashant S.

[Brian_Murdoch]

Hi Francois,

Although you may have created a partition, have you copied data to the new partition yet?

Copying data to this should dramatically increase the rebuild process as this is just idling in the background. You get this affect with all Smart Arrays but it's very noticeable on devices like the MSA1000 where copying dummy data to any new drives really does speed the process up.

Try copying a few Gigabytes to the new partition.

I hope this helps.

Brian