Will Raid work with different drive speed

[santar72]

Have two Maxtor 60 gig HD. One is 7200 and the other 5400. I'm asumming that it would work, but what would the preformance be? Would it be better to run them as master/slave?

 

[Jiggz]

You know what? I had the same question. After trying a WD20GB 7200 RPM ATA 100 and an IBM 20GB 7200 ATA66, I was never able to make the darn thing to work in Striping Mode. It'll work on all other modes except for striping. HDD's were not even recognized during boot up by the raid controller. They do not even show up on Fdisk!

 

[Viper GTS]

It should work, but you'll get best results with matched drives (same model). Your performance will be limited to that of the slower drive.

Viper GTS

 

[Jiggz]

Maybe I should have mentioned that I was using a FASTTrak66. But then the ATA 100 should have been backwards compatible to Ultra66. But no luck.

 

[MWink]

I am using 2 different speed and size Maxtors in a striping array without a problem. (on a Promise Fasttrak 66)

 

[Jiggz]

Can you give an overview on how you set this up. This is what I did.
When the RAID Bios shows up, I chose the Auto Set up. The setting was defaulted to Striping, which is what I need. Both drives will be assigned.
Then when I rebooted, the RAID CTRLR seeks the HDD's again and give you the option to enter the Bios Option again if you want. If you do not enter the Bios Option then it'll start the boot sequence. But then it stops with the msg "Invalid Boot Disk" Insert Disk and press any key. Something to this effect. Both drives have been individually Fdisk and formatted using Win98 Boot Disk. Both have also been individually "Sys". Trying again, I rebooted with the Win98 Boot Disk but then the HDD where not recognized by Win98 boot disk although they were recognized by the RAID Ctlr. I cannot Fdisk and Format them as "Striped" disk. What am I doing wrong? I've also tried manually assigning the HDD's in the RAID Bios for Striping to no avail.

 

[santar72]

Jiggz - It sound like your computer is trying to use the IDE controllers on your motherboard. Is your first boot device set to SCSI? You might also try creating a new boot disk modify to use just the device driver for the FastTrak card.

My problem is that I have to 60 gig ATA 100 Maxtor. One spins at 5400 rpm and the other spin at 7200 rpm. Will the controller make them spin both at 5400 or will the faster on always be waiting on slower one when R/W.

 

[Jiggz]

I did have the first boot device on the SCSI. Like I've mentioned before, the HDD will boot in Spanning or Mirroring mode but not in Striping. Maybe I need to use a modified boot disk. Can you send me a sampled modified boot disk with the FastTrak utilities on it or whatever makes it boot in Striping mode? emial