RAID 0 questions

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teh camper

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Nov 29, 2013
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I have one 2TB and one 3 TB WD Green. My questions are; If i make raid 0 right now, is it possible to add another HDD to the raid setup (when i got another HDD) and remove the 2 TB from the raid 0 without losing data?

Or is there another solution to improve my HDD performance like software RAID etc.?

or should i wait for another 3TB HDD and use it for RAID 0, and use the 2TB as backup drive?
 
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jimmysmitty
No you cannot do anything with two drives of a different size and hope to not lose data. RAID is done outside of Windows Disk Management, normally on a hardware card or if you use say onboard Intel RAID firmware. The drives will be stripped at the lowest level meaning that 1TB of that 3TB will be gone and once broken, the data is gone.

Second is the type of drive. You cannot use WD Greens in RAID, this is stated by WD themselves. In fact you really shouldn't use anything short of a WD Black or higher end Seagate for RAID. The WD Greens might randomly drop out. I built a massive server with 8 3TB (largest at the time) WD Greens in a RAID 5. The drives would randomly disappear causing the RAID to break and need to be rebuilt.

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ex_bubblehead

ex_bubblehead

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Nope, geometry of the new drive won't match the old and the array will break.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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In addition, you really don't want to use different drive sizes and speeds.

2TB + 3TB + RAID 0 = 4TB array.
Twice the size of the smallest.

And you don't want to use WD Greens, either. They spin up and down, in attempt to 'save energy'. The other drive is presumably 7200RPM, while the Green, when its actually running, is 5400. You'll be dragging the faster one down to the speed of the Green.
 
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teh camper

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oh ok. What about windows disk management, can i separate the 3TB into 1+2 TB and stripe it with another 2 TB?

 
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jimmysmitty

jimmysmitty

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Oct 5, 2007
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No you cannot do anything with two drives of a different size and hope to not lose data. RAID is done outside of Windows Disk Management, normally on a hardware card or if you use say onboard Intel RAID firmware. The drives will be stripped at the lowest level meaning that 1TB of that 3TB will be gone and once broken, the data is gone.

Second is the type of drive. You cannot use WD Greens in RAID, this is stated by WD themselves. In fact you really shouldn't use anything short of a WD Black or higher end Seagate for RAID. The WD Greens might randomly drop out. I built a massive server with 8 3TB (largest at the time) WD Greens in a RAID 5. The drives would randomly disappear causing the RAID to break and need to be rebuilt.

Your best bet is to just buy a 4TB HDD if you want the space or get two nice 2TB HDDs like WD Blacks or Seagate Barracudas and RAID 0 them.
 
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