RAID 5 Initialization Extremely Slow on Z790

The initialization process of a RAID 5 array on a Z790 system with three new 2 TB SATA hard drives is experiencing significant slowness. Even after 16 hours, the initialization process has only reached 7% completion, indicating an extremely slow progress rate. At this pace, it is estimated to take nearly 10 days to complete the initialization. This issue is being observed when configuring the RAID 5 array using the Optane software.

Information about the issue:

• What is the normal time for this process?

  This depends on the disk performance. For example, different performance between GEN3/GEN4 NVMe, SATA SSD, SATA HDD 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm.

• Assuming this is abnormal, what could be the cause?

  We previously observed one performance issue related to SATA HDD cache design. Ex: Seagate ST500LX025.

• If this eventually finishes, then someday a drive fails, does that also mean I'm looking at a similar time frame to rebuild the lost data? If so, I need to rethink RAID 5 as a viable option and get another drive for 0+1.

  If one disk fails, it can still work, and you can get a new disk to rebuild RAID5. This rebuild can be done by the HSA app.

• While initializing, the task manager shows zero drive activity. Is this normal?

  RAID initializing is mainly working inside the RST driver.

• While initializing, disk benchmark numbers drop tremendously. Read/write goes from 220/200 down to like 40/20. Normal?

  Since the RST driver is working on the initializing, it’s expected the performance will be impacted.