> Is there any advantage to running one big 16TB (raw) RAID 5 
> or having several RAID 5 groups (possible 1 per 2TB partition)?
> I know there will be more space loss with the extra RAID 
> groups but will this be offset with other factors?
> 

The disadvantage of one big RAID group is in rebuild time.  When a disk
fails, the array has to read the entire group in order to rebuild onto
the hot spare (in order to recompute the lost parity information).  This
is also when you're vulnerable to a second failure, which results in
data loss, and is when the failure is most likely to occur (since they
drives are more active than normal)

Personally, I wouldn't recommend RAID groups larger than 8+1 with disks
under 300GB.  That gives a usable RAID size of 2.4TB.

--Joe

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