Introduction to RAID : RAID Components and Features : Background Initialization

Background Initialization

Background initialization checks for media errors on the drives when you create a virtual drive. It is an automatic operation that starts five minutes after you create the virtual drive. This check makes sure that striped data segments are the same on all of the drives in the drive group.

Background initialization is similar to a consistency check. The difference between the two is that only a background initialization is forced on new virtual drives.

The new RAID 5 virtual drives and RAID 6 virtual drives require a minimum number of drives for a background initialization to start. If there are fewer drives, the background initialization does not start. The background initialization must be started manually. The following number of drives are required:

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New RAID 5 virtual drives must have at least five drives for the background initialization to start.

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New RAID 6 virtual drives must have at least seven drives for the background initialization to start.

The default and recommended background initialization rate is 30 percent. Before you change the rebuild rate, you must stop the background initialization or the rate change does not affect the background initialization rate. After you stop background initialization and change the rebuild rate, the rate change takes effect when you restart background initialization.