What is "Enable Bitmap" on my Qnap NAS?
"Bitmap" is used to allow faster RAID rebuild times, but you will be able to recover without it if you have a proper RAID level enabled.
When an array has a write-intent bitmap, a spindle (a device, often a hard drive) can be removed and re-added, then only blocks changes since the removal (as recorded in the bitmap) will be resynced.
Therefore a write-intent bitmap reduces rebuild/recovery (md sync) time if:
- the machine crashes (unclean shutdown)
- one spindle is disconnected, then reconnected
If one spindle fails and has to be replaced, a bitmap makes no difference.
A write-intent bitmap:
- does not improve performance
- may cause a degradation in write performance, it varies upon:
- the size of the chunk data (on the RAID device) mapped to each bit in the bitmap, as expressed by cat /proc/mdstat. The ratio (bitmap size / RAID device size )
- workload profile (long sequences of writes are more impacted, as spindle heads go back and forth between the data zone and the bitmap zone)
- can be removed/added at any time
If I remember correctly, it allows you to recover data faster. (Only in certain RAID scenarios though.) Here's a link -ignore the bickering- that should help.