I'm not getting nearly the read speed I expected from a newly defined software RAID 5 array across three disk partitions (on the 3 drives, of course!). Would someone kindly point me straight? After defining the RAID 5 I did `hdparm -t /dev/md0' and got the abysmal read speed of ~65MB/sec. The individual device speeds are ~55, ~71, and ~75 MB/sec. Shouldn't this array be running (at the slowest) at about 55+71 = 126 MB/sec? I defined a RAID0 on the ~55 and ~71 partitions and got about 128 MB/sec. Shouldn't adding a 3rd (faster!) drive into the array make the RAID 5 speed at least this fast? Here are the details of my setup: # fdisk -l /dev/sda Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160000000000 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19452 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 127 1020096 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda2 * 128 143 128520 83 Linux /dev/sda3 144 19452 155099542+ fd Linux raid autodetect # fdisk -l /dev/sdb Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160000000000 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19452 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 1 127 1020096 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sdb2 128 143 128520 83 Linux /dev/sdb3 144 19452 155099542+ fd Linux raid autodetect # fdisk -l /dev/sdc Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdc1 * 1 127 1020096 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sdc2 128 19436 155099542+ fd Linux raid autodetect /dev/sdc3 19437 60801 332264362+ 8e Linux LVM The RAID 5 consists of sda3, sdb3, and sdc2. These partitions have these individual read speeds: # hdparm -t /dev/sda3 /dev/sdb3 /dev/sdc2 /dev/sda3: Timing buffered disk reads: 168 MB in 3.03 seconds = 55.39 MB/sec /dev/sdb3: Timing buffered disk reads: 216 MB in 3.03 seconds = 71.35 MB/sec /dev/sdc2: Timing buffered disk reads: 228 MB in 3.02 seconds = 75.49 MB/sec After defining RAID 5 with: mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --level=5 --raid-devices=3 /dev/sda3 /dev/sdb3 /dev/sdc2 and waiting the 50 minutes for /proc/mdstat to show it was finished, I did `hdparm -t /dev/md0' and got ~65MB/sec. Dean
