RAID Questions

[buffchief]

I have a couple of questions about RAID.

1. Can you use two different sizes of hard drives to do RAID?

2. Can you use two different manufacturers (i.e. western digital for one and maxtor for the other) of hard drives to do RAID?

The help will be greatly appreciated.

 

[ThatDumbGuy]

Using different hard drives in a RAID 0 setup can result in two problems. First off, the size of the RAID array will only be the size of the smallest drive multiplied by the number of drives in the array. This is because the controller always writes to all the drives in the array and once one is filled no more information can be stored on the array. Secondly, the speed of a RAID 0 setup is only as fast as the slowest drive in the array. Because chunks of data are being written to the disks at the same time, if one drive is slower than the rest the others must sit and wait for the slowest drive to finish. It is for these reasons that it is suggested that identical drives be used on a RAID 0 setup.

A Raid Guide on Anandtech

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