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I like to use a 10TB RAID5 setup as a single partition on a file server for distributing user HOME via NFS in our network. As I have no experience on such large disk I like to know the Pros and CONS on that.

Interesting would be

How long does a RAID rebuild would take on disk failure?
How long does an fsck last on such large disks?
What performance penalty do I need to except from the size of the partition compared to smaller ones?
Would you rather recommend using smaller partitions and adopt nfs setup?

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I would recommend staying far away from RAID 5 for such a large volume. RAID 10 will perform better, rebuild faster, and have a much lower chance of a URE during rebuild. RAID 5 should be avoided at all costs here.

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But with raid10 I would loose much of my storage space. I currently have 6 * 2TB for building the raid. RAID10 would result in 6TB storage rather than 10TB as in RAID5. Isn't there a intermediate solution? What about a RAID6? – Justin Sep 3 '11 at 13:48
If you don't care about performance, RAID 6 is an OK compromise. If you care about performance, rebuild times, and rebuild reliability, then your only real choice is R10. – MDMarra Sep 3 '11 at 13:54
Okay, thanks for that recommendation. Any remark on large partitions? – Justin Sep 3 '11 at 14:00
Typically, more partitions on the same physical volume decrease performance. If you don't need the volume partitioned for logical separation, then there's no need to partition it. – MDMarra Sep 3 '11 at 14:05
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