Can you RAID two hard dives that have different speeds

[Guest]

Hello,
I have two internal harddrives,
one is 7200 RPM and the other is 5400 RPM, can I put them both into RAID as they are different speeds?
Thanks

Diezel

 

[RealBeast]

You can do it, although the slower drive would be the speed limit of the array, but you also may run into stability issues. In other words, possible but not to be recommended.

 

[geofelt]

Hello,
I have two internal harddrives,
one is 7200 RPM and the other is 5400 RPM, can I put them both into RAID as they are different speeds?
Thanks

Diezel

Yes.

But... are you talking about raid-0 or raid-1?

What do you wish to accomplish with raid?

 

[jaquith]

Yes but shouldn't. You'd be out of your mind to RAID 0. RAID 1 (mirror) ehh you'll be okay'ish; see below. Granted no two drives perform 'exactly' the same.

I do a lot of RAID, and I am so picky I want the same 'batch' of the same exact drives.

In RAID you get the 'LCD' Lowest Common Denominator:
Slowest speed (performance).
Smallest size e.g. 750GB + 1TB (250GB of the 1TB is lost)
Smallest buffer

edit: Further, IMO don't mix brands, each brand has it's own error reporting; not a good idea to mix. Also, ALL consumer WD lack TLER, so I never RAID them. See -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_recovery_control

 

[RealBeast]

^ +1

"I do a lot of RAID, and I am so picky I want the same 'batch' of the same exact drives. "

I totally agree -- my most recent 8 disk RAID 6 build had to have all the same batch of Hitachi 7200 rpm 3tb drives, and I made that a specific request in my Newegg order, which they fortunately got right.

 

[jaquith]

That's a Big A$$ array!!! I should add another paranoia, I verify the drives also share same firmware - the same 'batch' should

 

[RealBeast]

Yup checked that too. Also tested them all a bunch before using. I was very lucky to buy them before the flooding at $150 each.

It's my home media NAS with hundreds of my BluRay disks and many hundreds of my DVDs in iso image form -- easier to play on my HTPCs and protects my disks from careless family members, plus a lot easier to actually find the movie than digging through disks.

I didn't want to just use a QNAP like I do for clients, so I used an Adaptec 6805 adapter/Intel i3 2100/ASUS Z68V (all on pretty good sales), overkill but I had some extra money at the end of last year, which is rare nowadays. I have room for another adapter someday and the case has room for lots more drives if they ever get cheap again, a huge LianLi full tower I had in the closet.