Vinum Raid5 Init question

[David Elsing]

I've installed Vinum RAID5 on a 4-disk setup. Since I don't have much
experience I installed my plex through the example in the Vinum
manual. I used 'setupstate' to put the disks into 'up'-status.

Quote from the manual of the 4th example of the chapter "HOW TO SET UP VINUM":
"In addition, the volume specification includes the keyword
setupstate, which ensures that all plexes are up after creation."

But a couple of weeks later I read the following in the manual:

"Note that you must use the init command with RAID-5 plexes: otherwise
extreme data corruption will result if one subdisk fails."

I read this to my horror after I filled the volume with data. You'll
probably noticed I didn't init my volume. The disks are in good
condition. The volume is almost filled to the maximum capacity. So a
backup is a bit difficult due to the size of it. Are there any other
options? If one disks fails, do I still get corrupted data? I don't
know if any manual maintainer is reading this, but is it possible to
add this warning to the RAID5 example at the end of vinum(8)?

Regards,
David Elsing

Vinum create file:

drive d1 device /dev/ad4s1e
drive d2 device /dev/ad5s1e
drive d3 device /dev/ad6s1e
drive d4 device /dev/ad7s1e
volume raid setupstate
 plex org raid5 1024k
  sd length 0 drive d1
  sd length 0 drive d2
  sd length 0 drive d3
  sd length 0 drive d4