I've got two WD5000AAKS's; 500GB SATA 3gb/s drives with 32MB caches, and two SG Barracudas 500GB SATA 3gb/s drives with 16mb cache. The question I have is: does the cache size between elements in a RAID array affect the overall performance of the array in any meaningful way? I know that platter rotational speeds, interface speeds, and even size mismatches (losing size) can have a huge bearing on arrays, but is an array going to suffer, or even not function if I mix caches? I was planning on doing RAID 5 with all four with the onboard controller on an ASUS P5N-D motherboard. I suspect at the worst case, it will simply do what it does in every other situation like this and treat all of them as 16MB cache; the lowest common value, but I am not certain if it will even matter.
If anyone has any expertise or experience with a similar setup, I'd appreciate the input.
If anyone has any expertise or experience with a similar setup, I'd appreciate the input.