Mixed SATA 3/6Gb/s RAID 0

SlugForAButt · 15 Sep 2011 at 19:57

A really quick question for anyone that can help.
Will a RAID 0 setup work correctly with 2 drives that are identical ( same make, model) except for one (older version) being SATA 3Gb/s and one (newer) being 6Gb/s?
These will be running on a board that supports SATA 3Gb/s.

I guess I'm hoping that Sata 6Gb/s is backwards compatible and will just drop to 3Gb/s. Just not wanting to buy another obsolete 3Gb/s drive when I'll probably be upgrading my rig again in a year or so.

Cheers.

Surveyor · 15 Sep 2011 at 20:15

SATA 6Gbps is backwards compatible so it'll work.

If these are HDD's then SATA 3Gbps is hardly obsolete as no HDD has transfer speeds anywhere near the limit of SATA 3Gbps.

SATA 6Gbps for HDD's offers no noticable performance benefit.

I assume you're aware of the risks of RAID 0?

SlugForAButt · 15 Sep 2011 at 20:38

That answers my question perfectly Surveyor.
The risks associated with RAID 0 aren't too much of an issue to me though, this is only my home PC that isn't used for anything irreplaceable. Also, I back up to an external HD ocassionally.
Really, I'm just looking for a bit more speed until my next big upgrade. SSDs aren't an option for me because of perceived failure rate, price per Gb and the fact that there'll be better models out by the time I have SATA 6Gbs connectivity.

Thanks for the help.

Just one other thing. Am I right in thinking that Win7 has inbuilt RAID drivers?

Surveyor · 15 Sep 2011 at 20:49

If you're installing Windows 7 onto the RAID array then the drivers should be installed as part of the process.

If it's an Intel system then you should install the RST drivers here after Windows is installed.

Intel® Rapid Storage Technology

SlugForAButt · 16 Sep 2011 at 08:30

Thank you muchly.

SlugForAButt · 18 Sep 2011 at 19:15

Just one more question. I have an option on another matching HDD for next to nothing, is RAID 0 with 3 drives any faster really?

Surveyor · 18 Sep 2011 at 21:02

SlugForAButt said:
Just one more question. I have an option on another matching HDD for next to nothing, is RAID 0 with 3 drives any faster really?

In theory 3 drives in RAID 0 are faster than 2 drives but I can't recall any benchmarks.

With 3 drives you're tripling the chance of failure over a single drive.

SlugForAButt · 18 Sep 2011 at 22:11

Yep, but as purely a home/gaming/bitsnbobs pc I'll not too worry too much about the failure rate. Bear in mind I've not had even 1 HDD failure in multiple machines over 15 years
For an extra tenner you'd have to give it a go though wouldn't you?

Surveyor · 20 Sep 2011 at 00:29

SlugForAButt said:
Yep, but as purely a home/gaming/bitsnbobs pc I'll not too worry too much about the failure rate. Bear in mind I've not had even 1 HDD failure in multiple machines over 15 years
For an extra tenner you'd have to give it a go though wouldn't you?

For a tenner give it a go.