I’ve got 4 disks in a RAID 5 configuration. None of the disks is labeled (in the controller software) as a “hot backup”, so that leads to the question:
What exactly does a 4-disk RAID 5 configuration mean?
More specifically, how many disks could fail without data loss?
(I understand a 3-disk RAID 5 configuration, and that one disk could completely fail without data loss. But I can’t find an standard definition of a 4-disk RAID 5 configuration where one of the disks is not specifically labeled as a hot backup.)
I’m not a disk expert, so hopefully someone can elucidate this for me…
The controller is for a Dell PowerEdge: PowerEdge Expandable RAID Controller 3/Di.
