8 × 2 TB in RAID 6: the numbers
| Usable space | 12 TB (10.9 TB in Windows) |
|---|---|
| Raw space | 16 TB |
| Used for protection | 4 TB |
| Efficiency | 75% |
| Drives that can fail | Any 2 |
| Rebuild at 150 MB/s | 3 h 42 min |
| Rebuild at 50 MB/s (busy) | 11 h |
| Data read during rebuild | 14 TB |
| Read error risk, desktop drives | 67% (corrected) |
| Read error risk, NAS drives | 11% (corrected) |
Rebuild
Replacing a failed drive means writing a full 2 TB drive. At 150 MB/s with no other load that takes about 3 h 42 min; on a busy array running at 50 MB/s, about 11 h. The rebuild reads every surviving drive: 14 TB in total.
Read errors
Reading 14 TB, the chance of at least one unreadable sector is 67% with desktop drives (1 per 1014 bits) and 11% with NAS drives (1 per 1015). The second parity corrects it, so the rebuild finishes without losing data.
Our take
For 2 TB drives this is the setup most administrators would choose: the rebuild takes 3 h 42 min, and the array stays protected the whole time.