RAID 5 Initialization on RR622

[gokalex]

Hello, I just bought 4 WD green 2TB drives, and a towerraid from Sans Digital, it came with a RocketRaid 622 card that i used to set up the RAID 5 for my 4 drives, all went well until it started the initialization of the drives, i started about 8hrs ago and now im sitting on 7% done and with ~78hrs left. from what i read online i found out that initialization times may vary from a few hrs (2-3) to 24hrs. Am i doing something wrong?
the raid is set up like this:
Capacity: 6TB
Cache Policy: Write Back
BlockSize: 64k
SectorSize: 512B

my pc specs:
MSI P67A-GD65
i7 2600k @ 4.5GHz
16gb ram 1600MHz
2 gtx 460 SLI

if any1 has any suggestions it would be awesome,
p.s. i also read something about fast initialization and the difference between background and foreground initialization. but i didn't see any options to change how my initialization is going.

 

[gokalex]

for some reason i cant edit that post so ill just write here,

p.p.s I just tried to do an ATTO benchmark on the drive and it crashed my pc halfway thou, not promising, but after forced restart the initializing just kept going from where it left off. im hoping it crashed just coz i was trying to use it while it was initializing and not coz its faulty... (even if i tough that i was able to use it because its doing a background initialization)

 

[tomatthe]

Those drives are not supported in a Raid 5 set, I would return them while you can. You can run them in JBOD, Raid 0 or Raid 1, but they don't properly support any Raid level requiring parity.

I'm not certain on the exact issue you are describing, but I would return the drives and either get a different manufacture or the WD red or RE line.

 

[FireWire2]

Sorry to say this... RR622 is a disaster card. This what I call Friday Night Design.
And why in the word, still use software RAID (fake raid - term from linux)?!!!
I dont know there is way to do fast initialize on this card...

It's a piece of junk!

You can built yourself a decent hardware RAID w/o issue or problem

Get a SPM393-i here http://www.amazon.com/multiplier-hardware-RAID0-CLONE-Controller/dp/B004JPUZWU for internal solution or U3eS_RM http://www.datoptic.com/ec/usb3-and-esata-to-5-sata-drive-hardware-raid-jbod-controller.html for external solution.
Connect up to 5 HDD
Connect to SATA/USB3.0 or eSATA
Within two minutes you will have a RAID5 or RAID5+hot spare (HS for more reliable raid) transfer up to 250MB/s
Why this solution is good.
- cuz it's does not require much host CPU
- Driver-less, this mean you can update your OS software and it wont affect the RAID engine

I use these controllers for my clients with desktop drives ALL THE TIME, there is no need for RE (RAID EDITION) drive

 

[tomatthe]

Not worth putting more into it, but at the least try researching it for yourself in regards to these drives and a raid set requiring parity gokalex.

For the WD line of drives you do need RE/Red for them to work properly in a raid set using parity.

Below is a reasonable comparison case that did not end well. You may be lucky and never have a problem, but you are building something that I certainly would not rely on for anything important.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/270386-32-caviar-green-drives-raid


From above post: "The thread is a bit old but I feel obligated to report my results. I wanted to come back and say, "Ha, ha, ha..." to all the naysayers about using 3TB Green drives in RAID. Alas, I'm not saying that.

I had 4 3TB WD Green drives in a RAID 5 format attached to a RocketRaid 2300 card. Despite all the advice that green drives have such a problem with TLER I thought I would do it anyway. I moved all 6 TB of my movies to the array. In my mind, even if one drive failed I could still operate, albeit slowly, because it was in a RAID 5 array. I would simply pull the bad drive and rebuild. (Additional note, I thought since the RocketRaid 2300 is fake raid at about $120 it wouldn't have the same problems that real RAID controllers do...got that from some post)

I lost all my movies.

A few days ago the A/C went out upstairs and the hard drives started dropping. So I took the system downstairs where our other A/C unit was working and proceeded to rebuild. The problem is that rebuilding a RAID 5 array composed of 3TB drives takes days and days. It has to read every bit of data. Thus, within that time another drive would always drop. I'd have to reboot and then start over. After trying to save my data for over 5 days, the RAID simply wouldn't read the drives anymore.

So, to anyone searching for WD 3 TB drives in RAID - DO NOT ATTEMPT."

 

[gokalex]

Reading your posts i decided to put my drives in JBOD, i cannot return them because its past the 30days (because of shipping to eu it takes almost 3 weeks for me to get my stuff from newegg and i do not have time to send them back in 1 week, but ah well) also i was not expecting them to not function well with the RAID5 also because i got them in a bundle XD newegg was putting them in a bundle with the raid tower so i thought that they were the correct ones (stupid me for not doing research on the drives but just on the raid types and cards).

 

[FireWire2]

Not worth putting more into it, but at the least try researching it for yourself in regards to these drives and a raid set requiring parity gokalex.

For the WD line of drives you do need RE/Red for them to work properly in a raid set using parity.

Below is a reasonable comparison case that did not end well. You may be lucky and never have a problem, but you are building something that I certainly would not rely on for anything important.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/270386-32-caviar-green-drives-raid


From above post: "The thread is a bit old but I feel obligated to report my results. I wanted to come back and say, "Ha, ha, ha..." to all the naysayers about using 3TB Green drives in RAID. Alas, I'm not saying that.

I had 4 3TB WD Green drives in a RAID 5 format attached to a RocketRaid 2300 card. Despite all the advice that green drives have such a problem with TLER I thought I would do it anyway. I moved all 6 TB of my movies to the array. In my mind, even if one drive failed I could still operate, albeit slowly, because it was in a RAID 5 array. I would simply pull the bad drive and rebuild. (Additional note, I thought since the RocketRaid 2300 is fake raid at about $120 it wouldn't have the same problems that real RAID controllers do...got that from some post)

I lost all my movies.

A few days ago the A/C went out upstairs and the hard drives started dropping. So I took the system downstairs where our other A/C unit was working and proceeded to rebuild. The problem is that rebuilding a RAID 5 array composed of 3TB drives takes days and days. It has to read every bit of data. Thus, within that time another drive would always drop. I'd have to reboot and then start over. After trying to save my data for over 5 days, the RAID simply wouldn't read the drives anymore.

So, to anyone searching for WD 3 TB drives in RAID - DO NOT ATTEMPT."

I feel the pain, but
1_ RocketRaid 2300 card is not a good RAID card - it is not a HW raid
2_ To use WD or other TLER HDD, you must use ARECA card or decent HW RAID

So far my 8TB RAID5 base on 5x 2TB Hitachi and SPM394 http://www.amazon.com/Port-Multiplier-SATA-hardware-controller/dp/B004JPHAF0/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1345748378&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=spm393
Being in service over 3 yrs w/o a hiccup except replace one drive

It runs under FreeNAS

 

[itsaraid]

Hopefully I'm not getting in this thread to late. I plan on building a NAS. The Datoptic SPM394 mentioned above looks interesting, especially given the aggravation I've had with software raid due to a motherboard failure.

Assuming I read the Datoptic website correctly, unlike a lot of raid boxes, this Datoptic doesn't eat a PCIE slot. You just plug one of your SATA ports into it, then the 5 drives go to the box. Since this box is offloading some CPU work from FreeNAS, do I still use the FreeNAS RAM guidelines? I plan on going with server grade mobo using error corrected RAM, so the less ram I need the better.

BTW I noticed Backblaze is using the consumer grade Hitachi Deskstar drives rather than WD or even the Hitachi enterprise grade drives.

 

[FireWire2]

You will love the SPM394 - there is no drivers, no load to Host CPU you can update the firmware anytime without worry your PV wont play nice with the update ( like drivers bug). There is no need for hefty CPU, thus save energy hence save $$ in the long run

Here is what I did with SPM394
http://www.mpcclub.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22898&page=4

It'd been in service sine 2010 we replace two WD hdd

 

[itsaraid]

Two out of twenty drives needed replacing. Not so bad. Obviously it would be cleaner if you had a set up where you just slide the drives in, but it is a matter of how much downtime you can handle. In my case, I'll just use a standard PC case I have laying around. It is an old Supermicro that holds plenty of drives. I noticed Datoptics makes a raid cage of sorts if you want to go really high end.

 

[FireWire2]

There is no down-time
Cuz 20x drives are hot-swap fashion. I just remove and replace the HDD
and SMP394 rebuilt the raid, while the NAS is in serviced