Exact same drive needed for raid 0?

Vegeta · 22 Mar 2006 at 01:33

Hi i got a sata 2 westerndigital 16mb cache 250gb hd atm, do I need the exact same drive to run raid-0 or can I get say a bigger one? And if so does it have to be a western digital one?

semi-pro waster · 22 Mar 2006 at 10:39

It doesn't have to be exactly the same but you will only get the space of the smallest drive so some would be wasted if you bought a larger drive. I would however suggest that getting identical drives is a good idea because Raid0 isn't the most stable of arrangements so anything you can do to minimise the chances of problems is best. If you only want to test it out for a brief period then by all means mix and match drives but be aware that you may create problems for the longer term running.

Vegeta · 22 Mar 2006 at 18:42

Hmm buying another 250gb would be pointless then as this 250gb didnt last long lol, what kind of raid setup would be best and stable if i were to get say a 400gb hd?

And do you have to run two sata drives in raid setup? Dont know much about sata.

Mikey1280 · 22 Mar 2006 at 20:12

What do you mean 'buying another 250gb drive will be pointless. this one didnt last long' ?. You can add another 250 to give you 500gb of storage in raid.

Beansprout · 22 Mar 2006 at 20:22

Do you want space, speed or reliability? Pick two.

Space + speed = 2x400Gb RAID0 (800Gb usable space)
Space + reliability = 2x400Gb RAID1 (400Gb usable but reliable)
Speed + reliability = 2x74Gb Raptors in RAID0

You can't have all three unless you want to spend a lot more and get a bunch of 146Gb Raptors

Steves_pc · 23 Mar 2006 at 01:12

For slightly more money than another WD250 get a pair of Hitachi's

I did and they work a treat, also smids switched to these from Raptor's iirc.

Vegeta · 23 Mar 2006 at 22:01

I just need a massive hard drive basically lol - I've used this 250gb hard drive up soo fast, I think I might opt for a 400gb hard drive and run it with this 250gb if possible?

Beansprout · 23 Mar 2006 at 22:05

Unless you want reliability (ie, the data is important), just buy more disks as you need them

Alexrose1uk · 23 Mar 2006 at 23:34

Raid 2/4 Hitachi 250GB Sata2 and make sure the hds are set aam off and sata2 if your board supports it in bios. A single one has a sustained read of about 55 and burst of 220, so 2 or 4 of em with a 64K stripe would be blistering.