Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: How long should a RAID rebuild take?

This is topic How long should a RAID rebuild take? in forum Digital Cinema Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Nate Anderson (Member # 2711) on 02-11-2010, 05:44 PM:

I installed a new harddrive in our Dolby Digital Cinema system this afternoon and I wanted to know if anyone knew how long a rebuild should take?

It seems to be chugging along just fine, but seems to be taking a lot longer than it should.

Any ideas?

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 02-11-2010, 05:57 PM:

It could take many hours. Partly depends on the size of the array and the rebuild priority rate set in the RAID controller config.

(Disclaimer: I've never been near one of these servers but from what I've read here they use fairly standard RAID controllers. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.)

Posted by Alastair Comrie (Member # 4313) on 02-11-2010, 07:18 PM:

A rebuild on our DSS100 server takes approx 2 hours. I have only done it twice since we have had it so I guess it could differ.

Posted by Kevin Fairchild (Member # 4985) on 02-11-2010, 09:13 PM:

I think as soon as you start to play content the RAID will stop rebuilding. It can take up to 12+ hours if the hard drive is full. I always delete any extra content and start the build after the last show of the day and let it rebuild overnight.

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 02-11-2010, 09:25 PM:

How long? Just long enough for you to throw that D-Crapema in the dumpster and get a film system . [Big Grin]

Posted by Elise Brandt (Member # 5552) on 02-12-2010, 12:25 AM:

With us it's so far taken anything from 2 hours to "nobody knows how long because they went home", After all, the manual suggests it be done overnight or early in the morning, it may take up to 10 hours, theoretically.

I'm curious as to what would happen if you start to play content while the rebuild is in process but I'm not about to try [Big Grin]

not unless I have every copy handy for reloading and a whole day to do it.

Posted by Mark J. Marshall (Member # 1409) on 02-12-2010, 06:33 PM:

Lots of variables: Size of drive, speed of drive, speed of controller, how busy the controller is doing other stuff, etc. I've seen it take < half an hour, and I've seen it take lots and lots of hours.

Posted by Dominic Espinosa (Member # 2122) on 02-12-2010, 08:11 PM:

What Mark said.

Depends on the array.

In our SONY machines with a RAID 6 it depends on whether it's a data drive or a checksum drive, the checksum drives rebuild much faster.

Typically on these, with the hardware raid, it can take up to 8 hours if content is playing about but the advice all around is to rebuild after the last show of the night so as not to risk buffering problems while playing out. The same advice applies to any other system.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 02-12-2010, 09:09 PM:

If you are rebuilding a RAID on the Dolby and go into play mode(assuming you are able to) the RAID rebuild stops and then it resumes when you stop playing.

Posted by Kris Verhanneman (Member # 5562) on 02-13-2010, 04:12 AM:

What one of our technicians suggested:
Remove everything from your server.
Rebuild the raid and reload the content.

The rebuild goes a lot faster on a empty server.
After that you load 1 film and during the first screening you load the rest.
This was what he told me the fasted way.