3 × 4 TB in RAID 5: the numbers
| Usable space | 8 TB (7.3 TB in Windows) |
|---|---|
| Raw space | 12 TB |
| Used for protection | 4 TB |
| Efficiency | 67% |
| Drives that can fail | Any 1 |
| Rebuild at 150 MB/s | 7 h 24 min |
| Rebuild at 50 MB/s (busy) | 22 h |
| Data read during rebuild | 8 TB |
| Read error risk, desktop drives | 47% |
| Read error risk, NAS drives | 6.2% |
Rebuild
Replacing a failed drive means writing a full 4 TB drive. At 150 MB/s with no other load that takes about 7 h 24 min; on a busy array running at 50 MB/s, about 22 h. The rebuild reads every surviving drive: 8 TB in total.
Read errors
Reading 8 TB, the chance of at least one unreadable sector is 47% with desktop drives (1 per 1014 bits) and 6.2% with NAS drives (1 per 1015). Nothing is left to correct it, so the affected file, or on some controllers the whole rebuild, fails. These are worst-case datasheet rates; real drives usually do better.
Our take
With 4 TB drives the rebuild is short enough that RAID 5 is a reasonable choice, as long as anything you cannot replace is also backed up elsewhere.