can I add a different brand HDD to my raid3 array?

mrwill

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 26, 2005
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I have an Areca 1882ix-12 raid card which currently has 6 Hitachi drives attached in raid 3. I found two Samsung hard drives which are the same size that I would like to add to the array, which would make it an 8 drive array.

1) I know you are supposed to use the same drives, but what problems will I create if I use two drives from a different manufacturer (all same size)?

2) Can I just connect them and have the raid card take care of the details, or will I have to make a backup image(all data, no OS) , then break the array and rebuild with the extra drives, then restore the image?

I am using Win7-64
 
While not recommended, the only limitation of a RAID array is size, so as long as the disk are at least the same size, they will work. With the Areca card, you can connect the drives and expand the array without having to shut it down or recreate the array. Odd choice with RAID 3 though.
 
Thanks for the help. I do some video editing and I ran a few quick tests with a few raid choices and raid 3 gave the best performance.
 
You can even mix and match speeds and sizes, but you will be of course limited by your weakest link. If you have a raid 5 of 3 hard drives: 2x 1TB drives and 1z 500gb drive, your array would only be 1TB.

It is ideal to have the same firmware and drive model however. But for home use... Meh on drive manufacture and model as long as they are all close.
 
OK, so I have started the process(of adding the 2 drives). It says, "migrating". How long should this take? It has been about 2 hours so far.
 
OK, so I have started the process(of adding the 2 drives). It says, "migrating". How long should this take? It has been about 2 hours so far.

I don't know if anyone will have an accurate answer. As it can depend on so many things. On my PERC 5i from a fresh build on 3 drives of RAID5, it only took like 9 hours I think. I just added a 5th drive to my array as it only had 800GB left on 5.5TB and it took 4 days to rebuild the array. I also used the array during that time, mostly read, but some write. I'm not sure how much that affects the rebuild process.
 
It should give you a progress indicator (percentage). It's pretty consistent the entire way, so with a bit of simple math, you should be able to figure out approximately how long it will take.
 
Oh, I didn't see that before. It's found under "information". It's been about 4 hours and it's at 75%. I guess that means it should be approximately another hour and a half.
 
RAID 3? WTF?

And to answer your question, it is not ideal but will work just fine. As long as the capacity is greater-than or equal-to the existing, it will work.
 
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