Catastrophic Disk Failure Protection

^{IBM-AUSTRIA - PC-HW-Support 30 Aug 1999}

Catastrophic Disk Failure Protection

Catastrophic Disk Failure Protection

If a drive that is a member of a RAID-5 array fails, the remaining members of the array can use their redundant information to recalculate the lost data, either to respond to user requests for data or to rebuild the data stored on the lost drive when it is replaced with a new one.

In the following illustration, information in Record 1 from Drive 1 is combined with the check sum information on Drive 3 to recreate information that is not available from Drive 2.

As long as the array controller can access the remaining n-1 drives, the rebuild will be successful. Naturally, if a second disk failure were to suddenly occur, the array and its data would be lost. RAID-5 can only protect against the loss of a single drive.

More INFORMATION / HELP is available at the IBM-HelpCenter

Please see the LEGAL - Trademark notice.
Feel free - send a for any BUG on this page found - Thank you.