RAID 0 with different HD brands

[roypel]

Hi all,

I wanna buy a new HD and put it in a RAID 0 (striping) with my current HD (Maxtor 6Y080MO 80GB SATA 150). The thing is that Maxtor don't make this model anymore. I searched a lot but didn't find the exact smae HD (at least in a reasonable price).

I know that it is recommended to build RAID with identical HDs, but since I didn't find the same one, is it possible to use a different HD (same size)? Say WD 80GB SATA WD800JD for example... ?

Thanks,

Roy

 

[Captante]

RAID 0 should work fine with two different HD's, however performance will be limited by the older Maxtor ... just make sure that you either buy another SATA 150 drive or a SATA 300 drive with a setting that limits it to 150 output. (usually a jumper)

One thing to keep in mind is that RAID 0 doesn't give all that much of a performance boost in desktop applications with newer HD's but it DOES cut time before drive failure roughly in half... I'd suggest either installing 2 seperate drives or going with RAID 1 which provides some additional data integrity.

 

[roypel]

Thank you.

Will be happy for more responses. Worried about compatibilities issues......

Roy.

 

[conlan]

Originally posted by: Captante
RAID 0 should work fine with two different HD's, however performance will be limited by the older Maxtor ... just make sure that you either buy another SATA 150 drive or a SATA 300 drive with a setting that limits it to 150 output. (usually a jumper)

One thing to keep in mind is that RAID 0 doesn't give all that much of a performance boost in desktop applications with newer HD's but it DOES cut time before drive failure roughly in half... I'd suggest either installing 2 seperate drives or going with RAID 1 which provides some additional data integrity.

QFT

 

[Captante]

The only other issue you need to pay attention to is to try & match up as many of the specifications between your existing Maxtor & whatever drive you buy to go with it... for example cache size, seek time etc (size doesn't matter ... 80gb or larger is fine)

Again however the only RAID configuration I use these days in desktops is RAID 1 because the loss in drive reliability with RAID 0 isn't woth the very small performance increase.

 

[roypel]

Very small? it's suppose to be more than 50% faster isn't it?

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: roypel
Very small? it's suppose to be more than 50% faster isn't it?

in theory str will increase a lot, but random small random access will probably remain the same

 

[roypel]

Well, let's take PS editing or vius scanning or defraging as my popular "PC slowing" tasks, won't all of these improve considerably?

 

[Jiggz]

PS Editing yes but not a whole lot with scanning or defragging. Although, I may say I've been on RAID 0 for almost a decade and can't seem to stand a single hdd or non RAID 0 system.

 

[Captante]

Originally posted by: roypel
Well, let's take PS editing or vius scanning or defraging as my popular "PC slowing" tasks, won't all of these improve considerably?

Not really ... I used to do either RAID 0 -or- 0+1 on every system I built, but then I began doing some testing & saw that there just wasn't much difference in real-world performance which is supported by all the recent benchmarks I've read. You'll notice slightly faster level-loading in games & if you do a lot of video-editing you'll notice a small difference too, but for genral desktop use you won't even be able to tell.

I had RAID 0 installed on my current A64 5000+ @ 2.8ghz & now I have RAID 1 on it with the identical configuration otherwise & theres literally no perceptible difference in performance.