IDE RAID 1 using mixed size drives

Archived from groups: it.comp.hardware.storage,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage (More info?)

Andy Nugent wrote:
> I've got a couple of IDE hard drives lying around (1 x 40GB and 1 x 60GB)
> but no spare IDE slots in my PC.
>
> I've seen a fairly cheap "2 port IDE RAID (0,1) ATA133 PCI card".
> Unfortunately the shop doesn't give details of the manufacturer of this
> card.
>
> Can anyone tell be if they've tried (and succeeded or failed) to put mixed
> size drives in a RAID 1 formation?
>
> I'm guessing it would be possible as long as you only used the equivelent of
> the smallest drive for all drives (in my case 40GB from each drive giving me
> an 80GB drive).
>
>

RAID 1 will duplicate the data across the drives, so your two 40Gb
partitions become one 40Gb RAID1 partition. So from a space perspective
you are worse off than if you just use the 60Gb drive, but the data is
theoretically more secure.

A RAID 0 will give you 40 +40 or 80GB of faster striped data, but it is
less secure than a single drive.

You may well find that the controller will allow you to mount the drives
as non-RAID seoarate drives much as a normal controller does. This would
give you 40+60=100 Gb of storage in two partitions.