raid 6 [HELP] Can Raid 6 parity drive be smaller than Total Stroage?

[CGameDev]

I am configuring a raid 6 for my Plex server. 

How does this work if my total storage data exceeds the Parity which is 8TB and if so how dows the Parity acrurally works

[Livin]

5 minutes ago, xiiijamaican said:

I am configuring a raid 6 for my Plex server. 

How does this work if my total storage data exceeds the Parity which is 8TB and if so how dows the Parity acrurally works

RAID6 spreads the parity across all the drives.  You don't have "a drive" or "two drives" dedicated to parity.  It's a lot easier to visualize.  Here's a link that puts it in perspective:

 

https://www.acnc.com/raidedu/6

[LukeLinusFanFic]

10 minutes ago, Livin said:

RAID6 spreads the parity across all the drives.  You don't have "a drive" or "two drives" dedicated to parity.  It's a lot easier to visualize.  Here's a link that puts it in perspective:

 

https://www.acnc.com/raidedu/6

This is like that annoying puzzle at the middle of mass effect 1 in that awful mission with no autosave...

[nosirrahx]

1 hour ago, xiiijamaican said:

I am configuring a raid 6 for my Plex server. 

How does this work if my total storage data exceeds the Parity which is 8TB and if so how dows the Parity acrurally works

Parity is data used to take the non corrupt disks and recreate the missing data. It is not a pair of data.

Picture disk 1 2 3 and 4 being data, 5 is parity.

Put a 1 on disk 1 and 3 and a 0 on disk 2 and 4. Add those together and ditch what you carry, you get 0, store that on disk 5.

Now disk 3 dies. If you add disk 1, 2 and 4 you get a 1. Parity disk 5 is a 0 so the missing bit has to be a 1.

This is a MASSIVE oversimplification (especially since RAID 6 uses 2 parity disks, not 1) but the general math works this way and is why the parity is much smaller than the total primary storage.

[Livin]

19 hours ago, nosirrahx said:

This is a MASSIVE oversimplification (especially since RAID 6 uses 2 parity disks, not 1) but the general math works this way and is why the parity is much smaller than the total primary storage.

The biggest thing to keep in mind is the parity in RAID5 and RAID6 is not limited to one or two "parity drives", it's spread across all of the drives in the array. That's why I linked the image above as it's way easier to visualize

[CGameDev]

3 minutes ago, Livin said:

The biggest thing to keep in mind is the parity in RAID5 and RAID6 is not limited to one or two "parity drives", it's spread across all of the drives in the array. That's why I linked the image above as it's way easier to visualize

ok i understand thanks

[nosirrahx]

5 hours ago, Livin said:

The biggest thing to keep in mind is the parity in RAID5 and RAID6 is not limited to one or two "parity drives", it's spread across all of the drives in the array. That's why I linked the image above as it's way easier to visualize

Oh I know, I was trying to minimize the information to just how parity works and why it does not need to be as large as an actual mirror of the complete data.