Raid-Z2 with 5 Drives? Issues?

[TXAG26]

I have 5x 2TB HDD's that I'd like to create into a Raid-Z2. I've read that Raid-Z2 needs an even number of drives (e.g. 4, 6, 8). Why is this and what could happen if I use 5 drives for this setup?

Is there just a slight performance hit or storage size issue? Or is it something more serious that could jeopardize the stability/operation of the Raid-Z2 setup?

 

[survive]

Hi TXAG26,

There's nothing particularly wrong with a 5 drives raidz2, six drives just happens to be "cleaner" mathematically.

Basically when you have one of the magic number of drives zfs can write split the writes up so the optimal amout of data is written to each drive.....maybe you could say 6 drives is more efficient than 5.

If you are just starting out I would encourage you to pick up a 6th drive, but there's no shame in doing just 5.

-Will