Raid n00b Question..2 different drives.

Aikon359 · 5 Apr 2009 at 23:38

Cant believe ive been custom building for so many years and never touched anything raid related....

well heres the big Q guys.

got an asus p5q-pro mobo, 1x 500gb seagate baracuda 7200.11 sata2 drive
and 1x 500gb samsung sata2 drive (cant remember model number as its being rmad at the moment lol)

would i be able to raid 0 these 2 together? or do i have to have 2 identical drives?

theyre the same interface, same cache, same size so would that work?

cheers all.

Greenlizard0 · 5 Apr 2009 at 23:56

Since they're the same speed/size etc., they should be ok in RAID0.

Aikon359 · 6 Apr 2009 at 10:39

Nice one

cheers green ;-)

FaceplantSi · 6 Apr 2009 at 12:08

Greenlizard0 said:
Since they're the same speed/size etc., they should be ok in RAID0.

With the emphasis on the 'should' - always best to use matched drives if poss. But I would just advise being cautious with what data you put on these to start with just in case...

Greenlizard0 · 6 Apr 2009 at 12:53

Indeed, I wrote that deliberately.

If your drive is being RMA'd it's worth thinking about whether you wanna take a slight money hit and buy another drive identical to the one already in your possession, and then selling on the returns.

People usually go for matched drives. even down to the make and model (including myself). Somebody else slightly more in the know will be able to tell you why, it might have something to do with how the drives interact through their e.g. SATA connections. But it's a standard, so maybe not.

miniyazz · 6 Apr 2009 at 16:05

I was actually under the impression it was best not to use drives from the same batch, and to use drives the same size but from different manufacturers if possible. The reasoning behind this is that drives from the same place are liable to have the same defects (if any) and so since they will have very similar workload, being in RAID, the chances of them failing at the same time, or at least before you've had a chance to rebuild the array, is quite high. Of course, that's probably not a consideration with RAID 0 - you're fairly stuffed even if just one of the drives goes to a happy place.

psd99 · 6 Apr 2009 at 17:18

I don't see the point in RAID 0 speed wise to be honest unless you got 2 ultra fast drives like those raptors

Aikon359 · 8 Apr 2009 at 12:34

only reason im doing it is cos i have 2 500gb drives just sitting around, got a 1tb for storage, so any perfomance gain wehter it be little or huge is a benefit in my eyes