Question with my first NAS box

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jordan12

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So I have 5 Disks. I set it up in the NAS OS to ne Raid 6. And it shows 3 days to build the array.

What exactly is it doing that it takes so long?
 
What exactly is it doing that it takes so long?
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That is way longer than I see with software raid on linux (or zfs) however I suspect the NAS box has a much less capable processor then the 3.X GHz xeons that I typically use. Are you using SMR drives (I only use 7200 RPM PMR drives in raid)? If not perhaps the default settings may give the rebuild a low priority.
 
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It may be helpful to know exactly what NAS, OS, drives - general spec and size, partitioning and file system etc.. you're using?

That does seem like a really long time, but may be as others have said it may be partially a hardware issue. Learning what you're working from may provide more answers.
 
From a previous thread, OP has an Asus AS5110T NAS which uses a quad-core Bay Trail Celeron J1900 (CPUMark=1883) with 2GB RAM.

jordan12 said:
So I have 5 Disks. I set it up in the NAS OS to ne Raid 6. And it shows 3 days to build the array. What exactly is it doing that it takes so long?
Click to expand...

RAID-5/6 arrays need to be initialized or synced before use. This initialization can be done "offline", which is very fast because it basically consists of writing all zeros to all drives, but the array won't be ready for use until it's complete. Or the initial sync can be done "online", where the array is available for immediate use but the RAID controller will perform computations and write to the drives in the background. The latter method can be quite a bit slower than the former.

From the AsusStor RAID Intro, it only does online sync, probably for user-friendliness. That's why it's giving you the multiple day figure. Officially, the manual only says "sync time depends on the capacity of the drives".

Typically one stops activities on an array to make online sync go a little faster. Perhaps if you disconnect the NAS from the network it may speed up. Try it for a few hours, then connect it back and check on progress. YMMV.
 
izx said:
From a previous thread, OP has an Asus AS5110T NAS which uses a quad-core Bay Trail Celeron J1900 (CPUMark=1883) with 2GB RAM.



RAID-5/6 arrays need to be initialized or synced before use. This initialization can be done "offline", which is very fast because it basically consists of writing all zeros to all drives, but the array won't be ready for use until it's complete. Or the initial sync can be done "online", where the array is available for immediate use but the RAID controller will perform computations and write to the drives in the background. The latter method can be quite a bit slower than the former.

From the AsusStor RAID Intro, it only does online sync, probably for user-friendliness. That's why it's giving you the multiple day figure. Officially, the manual only says "sync time depends on the capacity of the drives".

Typically one stops activities on an array to make online sync go a little faster. Perhaps if you disconnect the NAS from the network it may speed up. Try it for a few hours, then connect it back and check on progress. YMMV.
Click to expand...


I appreciate all of this information. It looks like it has 1 day left. So hopefully tomorrow morning I can start copying files to it. :)
 
I know QNAP has an option to do a bad block check as it initializes, not sure about Asustor though. It does add a lot of time to the initialize.
 
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