Very n00b question pls don't laugh

wnm0 · 9 Aug 2006 at 20:35

To have 2 h/d in raid do they have to be exactly the same as each other also if I had say 2 @ 160 gig would that give me 320 gig total or is there some thing i'm missing lol... :confused:

Rgds, Wayne..

skiba · 9 Aug 2006 at 20:37

They don't need to be exactly the same but obviously the mirror (Raid 1) can only be as big as the smallest drive. Raid 5 uses 3 or more disks.

No you wouldn't get 320gb, they would a be a mirror of each other so still only 160gb. Plenty of sites will explain it better than I can.

semi-pro waster · 9 Aug 2006 at 21:43

skiba said:
No you wouldn't get 320gb, they would a be a mirror of each other so still only 160gb. Plenty of sites will explain it better than I can.

Well it depends on the form of Raid, Raid0 you get the combined space of both drives(so 320gb in this case) as you are striping the data across the two for speed. There is no redundancy so you might not call it proper Raid but it is usually known as Raid for simplicities sake.

I wouldn't normally advise Raid0 though unless there is a good backup system in place or the data is not valuable.

skiba · 9 Aug 2006 at 21:53

yes, true, probably should have mentioned that but I assumed he wanted redundancy. You could do Raid 1+0 if you want both

Bolerus · 9 Aug 2006 at 23:15

have always made sure they are the same here, same brand same size, as clsoe to each other serial as poss

Bolerus · 9 Aug 2006 at 23:16

Oops hit submit too soon lol

Raid can be a pain in the ass, so its always best to take as many precautions as you can in my experience