Mismatched drives in a RAID

skyripper · 7 Dec 2011 at 20:50

Had a RAID5 of 3 drives, samsung 750GB M750HB. One broke, went for RMA. In the meantime I bought another one as running a RAID5 without one of the disks is asking for trouble.

RMA took ages. Eventually they've sent me a 1000GB M101MBB.

Now I was going to add this into the RAID5 to bring the capacity up to just over 2TB, but its a different drive, so latencies, timings to hit a sector etc. are all going to be out compared to the others. It could be slower, it could be quicker - dont know yet.

Is it worth pushing for a like for like replacement, or should I just use the new disk in the array?

celliott · 7 Dec 2011 at 20:52

What RAID is it?

Intel Matrix RAID = May cause problems
Linux Software RAID = Wont be a problem
Hardware RAID = Shouldn't be a problem, but better to match drives..

skyripper · 7 Dec 2011 at 20:58

Its RAID5 off an Intel Z68 southbridge.
So pseudo Hardware raid (as in XOR calcs are done by the CPU).

skyripper · 8 Dec 2011 at 00:38

All irrelevant anyhow. Despite the intel software help saying it will.. it wont allow RAID5 expansion. Maybe thats reserved for the enterprise server kit.

Essexraptor · 8 Dec 2011 at 00:49

might be better off asking this question over in the Server and Enterprise section and the guru's over there may be able to help