Quick Drive Question

[Bleedblue12345]

Hi everyone, been a while

I just have a quick question

So one of my 500gb samsung spinpoints died, and I bought a western digital 500gb drive to replace it. My question is if/when my samsung gets back from its RMA could I stick both in and do both drives and raid 0 or 1, or would I have to just use both seperately.

both drives are 500gb, both are 7200rpm sata 3.0, both with 16mb cache, just different manufacturers.

 

[gigabyte1024]

you can use both for a raid array.
you can use any two drive for a raid array.

 

[Farva]

It is better to use like models and not to cross brands, but the question becomes, why do you want to use RAID?

 

[xenotype]

It is better to use like models and not to cross brands, but the question becomes, why do you want to use RAID?

Yup. Always best to use exactly similiar same models. If youre paranoid, you get the same models, each from different lots to avoid the bathtub curve failure thing. (wikipedia it). For storage, there is little to be gained from simple 0 or 1 RAID, Unless youre doing video editing work and require the speed, storage for movies or games isnt demanding enough to require the performance gained through a stripe. (RAID 0). RAID 1 would be best for sensitive files, and redundancy if one drive died, but keep in mind you only have 1/2 the advertised space, two drives are essentially mirrored. You are still vulnerable to other sources of data failures, viruses, mechanical failure, PSU failure, etc. RAID isnt a backup solution. Storage arrays benefit the most from RAID5, being fault tolerant, but that requires a better (read more expensive) RAID card, and at least 3 drives. All being identically spec'd.