Quick question about RAID 0

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Max-Powers

Gawd
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Jan 9, 2005
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I am new to the RAID deal. I have a Rosewill Raid box with 2 1.5 TB seagate drives in it. I have had them for a while in RAID 0.
My question is, can I add to it anytime? Can I add another 1.5 TB drive to my RAID 0 at any time? Does it have to be the exact same drive or can it be any size make and model?
 
Max-Powers said:
I am new to the RAID deal. I have a Rosewill Raid box with 2 1.5 TB seagate drives in it. I have had them for a while in RAID 0.
My question is, can I add to it anytime? Can I add another 1.5 TB drive to my RAID 0 at any time? Does it have to be the exact same drive or can it be any size make and model?
Click to expand...

I would suggest you read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID and while personally I wouldn’t recommend it and OEMS don’t recommend it, however yes you can add other makes/models and even sizes, the size should default to the lowest spaced disc, the problem is hardware is very different and that RAID box might only prefer certain make/model/size disc. Since you are using RAID0 I would be extremely cautious in using more than two disc and especially different make/models, realize that if any single drive goes then you lost all of you data, RAID0 improves performance and creates more space that is all..
 
I just use it as my media storage. I don't want 5 separate drives full of movies, I just want one big drive full of movies. I am aware that I will loose it all if it goes bad, but I don't have the money to buy double the drives for anything else.
 
buy a third drive and switch to RAID 5, which adds some redundancy.

RAID is not, repeat NOT, a backup solution, but at least with parity you'll be less likely to experience a catastrophe.
 
you shouldn't be using raid 0 (this is coming from a guy that has 3 different raid 0 strips in his box) (my sig is a little old, i have added a 3rd stripe of 2x0.5tb drives) however, none of mine is used for storage, i use a external nas that sits offline unless im doing a backup of data, while you can use different size/make disks in raid 0. i highly advise against it, use the exact same model or don't use raid at all. you can use raid5, but again, i recommend using the exact same model, if the models differ at all it can mean performance differences, and slow up the whole system.. if you MUST use different make and model, use JBOD mode... you dont gain the speed offered by any raid modes (or any redundency for that matter), but you do gain the storage space, and the system wont give a rats ass about the difference in disk size/speed (hell you could mix 5400rpm disks with 7200 or even 10k's if you want..) and from what i understand if a disk fails, you only loose the data on that disk and any partial data on the disk before/after it,every thing else should remain intact, and usable... being that it is only for media, speed is not a concern. the only issue with jbod modes are backup solutions.. it takes alot of dvds to make 1TB...let alone 3tb (and if you visit the storage forums 48tb...lol)

im sure somebody will come along and string me out for recommending JBOD, but honestly, it really is the best solution for low cost, straight media storage. raid 0 one disk fails you lose everything, and with raid 5, you lose 1 disks worth of storage space raid5= 1tb+1tb+1tb+1tb=3tb... extra cost (plus cpu overhead OR even more cost in the form of a dedicated card) makes it hard to recommend for media.
 
+1 on the JBOD box. It's just storage, not backup, and the fastest you'll ever need to read from it is when you're copying to another hard drive, and having all of your storage in one volume is handy if you want to share media, etc. And JBOD is safe as can be to grow with mixed drive types. Nothing to gain and everything to lose in RAID0 IMHO.

Dustin
 
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