The units in echo are kB as in kilobyte. Setting a high sync speed echo 120000 >/proc/sys/dev/raid/speed_limit_min This will increase the speed, note that sometimes a rebuild is slow due to current disk activity/iowait. If that is not the cause then you may have a hardware issue (controller, cable or a bad drive). Setting a lower sync speed echo 1200 >/proc/sys/dev/raid/speed_limit_max........

mod_status is a great way to track down the source of high CPU usage and to find what vhost/script is the cause of it. It gives you a live view of bandwith usage, CPU usage, and memory usage broken down by domain/vhost and script/URI. Enable mod_status vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf ExtendedStatus On SetHandler server-status Order Deny,Allow Deny from all All........

I have no idea why but mkfs.ext3 defaults to a patheticlly small blocksize of 1024 bytes/1KB (kilobyte). That means the maximum filesize is ONLY 16GB! With 2KB/2048 bytes you get a 256 GB maximum filesize, and with 4KB/4096 bytes you get 2TB! I finally noticed/paid attention to this after realizing that with rsync and scp that no file larger than 17GB could be transferred. I then realized it must be a file size limit on the partition. Here is what tune2fs tol........