Raid 1 potential problem?

[zalazin]

I bought 2 ST3500630AS Seagate 500 gig SATA drives for use in a raid 1 array at Best buy. VIA 8237R controller. the array created okay but I get clunking sounds when copying files, that bothers me. One firmware is AAE the other AAK.
I understand that the AAK is optimized for server the AAE isn't. One is optimized for throughput, one for performance? I am thinking that this is causing a potential problem in the array as one drive has a problem duplicating or keeping up with the other? I ran seagate tools both drives have no problems. Comments, fixes?

 

[Rocco123]

Ideally, you want to have all the drives in one array at the same firmware level. This is especially hard to do in the consumer world, because as you've experienced, they make various changed throughout the model lifespan.

I've heard AAK are the newer drives manufactured in China. Maybe you know that already. I've heard they are impossible to flash to AAE, as the board does not allow it. I've also heard that the AAKs are much louder than AAE revisions, which explains the clunk. It's most likely not both drives doing this.

With that said, if it's not too late, return the AAK and see if you get lucky with an AAE. I don't think this is a huge deal, but if they are different controller boards on the drive, it may cause issues down the road, ESPECIALLY WITH SOFTWARE RAID. Hardware RAID is a lot less picky about it. I've ran RAID 5 arrays with mixed seagates, maxtors and fujitsu's, and worked fine. I've also ran many arrays with Maxtors with different firmware levels with disasterous results. YMMV. I would recommend running the same FM level in your array.

 

[zalazin]

You have confirmed what I thought. I will return the AAK tomorrow. They had drives from both china and thailand, the thailand drive was the AAE. I will exchange and hope for the best.