SAS advice mixing makes of drives

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pkfox

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Mar 26, 2014
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Hi all, Ive just bought a HP Proliant ML330 G6 server ( used ) which has two 330gb SAS drives ( HP originals ) configured as one logical drive which I believe to be RAID 1 ( the drive shows ~ 248 GB available with Windows 7 and nothing else installed ) as you can probably gather I am seriously out of my depth here, my question is what drives can I add to this as I have four bays available and am currently only using two ( I want to stay with SAS drives ) ? Do I have to to use HP drives or are there compatible ones I can add ? I believe mine are 15k spin speed and dual port, if this is an amateurish question I apologise

Many thanks
 
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TyrOd

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Aug 16, 2013
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You should be able to add any SAS drives and set them up independently.
Obviously if you're looking to use the existing drives together with new drives in a different configuration, you'll ultimately be limited by the performance/capacity of those two drives, but adding drives of different make and even different capacities shouldn't be a problem as long as you understand those limitations.
 
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pkfox

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OK thanks that's a start, when you say set them up independently do you mean as a separate logical drive or can I add them to the existing array ? I'm very nervous about damaging something so please forgive my questioning and thanks again

 
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choucove

choucove

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Basically there should be no compatibility issues using different brand, capacity, or even RPM SAS drives together in the same controller so long as they are not part of the same logical drive. If you want to create a logical drive of multiple drives (RAID 1, 5, 10, etc.) then the drives should be the identical model.

So lets say you have your two 300 GB 15k SAS drives right now in RAID1. If you wanted to increase that capacity and turn that into a RAID10, you'd need to purchase two additional 300 GB 15k SAS HP drives. Ideally you should get the same model number, but I have had SOME luck with creating RAID arrays using HP drives but not the same identical model number, I just don't recommend it! However, if you wanted to create a completely separate new RAID 5 array, such as for data, then those drives wouldn't have to be identical to what you already have in there, but they should all be identical to each other within that logical array.
 
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TyrOd

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Well they don't all have to be identical in terms of potential hardware failure or stability, but if they aren't you will be wasting performance or capacity somewhere.

With RAID the smallest and slowest drives will be the baseline for capacity and performance.
 
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pkfox

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Mar 26, 2014
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OK thanks , how do I "set them up" do I just place the new drives in the vacant bays and reboot ? Or is there a process that needs to be followed ( sorry I'm a software man RAID and controllers at a dark art to me ) thanks again
 
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pkfox

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Mar 26, 2014
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OK thanks, so if I get a couple of new ( identical capacity ) drives and put them in the vacant bays and reboot, the controller will just take care of everything ? Sorry but I'm very new at this ;-)
 
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