Mix 7200.10s with 7200.11 in raid

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gjvrieze

[H]ard|Gawd
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Sep 8, 2006
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Hi, I have 8x 750GB SATA 7200.10s and am going to grab 8 more, but I see that the .11s are only 5 dollars more.. I would go with them in a heart beat, as long as they do not mess with my raid array... I am going to be using HighPoint RocketRAID 2340 raid card... Thanks for any thoughts.....
 
Are you planning to make a separate array for the new drives? Is speed a concern?

Conventional wisdom is that matching sets of drives are best in terms of speed and reliability. If you're going to make more than one set (i.e., RAID array) it shouldn't matter.
 
unhappy_mage said:
Are you planning to make a separate array for the new drives? Is speed a concern?

Conventional wisdom is that matching sets of drives are best in terms of speed and reliability. If you're going to make more than one set (i.e., RAID array) it shouldn't matter.
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The plan was a large 15 drive array in raid 5 with one left out as a hot spare....
 
gjvrieze said:
Hi, I have 8x 750GB SATA 7200.10s and am going to grab 8 more, but I see that the .11s are only 5 dollars more.. I would go with them in a heart beat, as long as they do not mess with my raid array... I am going to be using HighPoint RocketRAID 2340 raid card... Thanks for any thoughts.....
Click to expand...

Disks in a single array should be the same make, model and firmware rev. Of course adding the .11s might very well work for their entire lifespan, I just wouldn't take the risk.
 
Rocco123 said:
Disks in a single array should be the same make, model and firmware rev. Of course adding the .11s might very well work for their entire lifespan, I just wouldn't take the risk.
Click to expand...

I'm a little confused where the source of this recommendation comes from. The only drawback I can think of to mixing drive types in a RAID array is that the faster drives will be limited in speed by the slower drives. The company I work for makes no such recommendation for matching drives within an array.

I've done plenty of experiments mixing various SAS and SATA drives in different combinations for arrays and have not had any issues even with those huge differences.

The drives are completely independent of each other as far as the RAID controller is concerned. All it does is split up the single IOs from the host system into several IOs for each drive and then send them out to whatever drives they apply to. I can't think of any interdependence that would exist between the drives.
 
I agree with UICompE02.

So what does one do in 3 years when one drive fails? Look for a replacement with the same firmware? Lots of luck doing that.
 
I would already be worried about having 15 drives in a RAID 5 array since you can only lose one drive from the array. I know you have a hot spare but the time required to (whats the word here reset or fix or redistribute parity?) is probably substantial and no one wants to lose ~9.8TB of data.

I would strongly consider setting up a separate array for that reason alone or minimize other factors that might sorta possibly maybe have an affect on the longevity of the array.
 
I think instead of going RAID 5 + hot spare, a RAID 6 would always be better. With the RAID 5, you still have that window of time where you can tragically lose your data. With RAID 6, that won't be a problem.
 
Cyrilix said:
I think instead of going RAID 5 + hot spare, a RAID 6 would always be better. With the RAID 5, you still have that window of time where you can tragically lose your data. With RAID 6, that won't be a problem.
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Agreed, I went RAID6 with my ARC-1160ML2 and 16x500GB 7200.9's
 
pc299 said:
Agreed, I went RAID6 with my ARC-1160ML2 and 16x500GB 7200.9's
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I am thinking about getting the ARC-1280ML now, so I agree about raid 6, with this many drives, I need some piece of mind....
 
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