raid 5 question?

[P3N1X0R]

so i know the deal for the most part and im goin to either go with freenas or openfiler, quite liklely freenas since its bsd based, anyhow

i have alot of drives at home, but theyre not all the same brand.
i do have 4 120gb and 4 250gb all identical model/brand which will probably be the way im going anyways

but i also have some western digital, seagates and maxtors, and theyre all 250gb. though they may have differing buffer size, the rpms are the same. but would that affect anything?
am i better off using all identical stuff are there any benefits, or cons?

going by a quick google i see
Hard Disk Requirements: Minimum of three standard hard disks; maximum set by controller. Should be of identical size and type.

so i guess that pretty much answers my question.

 

[Lazn_Work]

Can you mix brands and size and speed? Yes. Is it a good idea, probably not.

For my Openfiler LSR box I just returned a 500GB 7200.9 that I didn't even plug in to get a 7200.10 to match the other two drives I already had purchased.. (Fry's deal, didn't pay attention to where MFG'd. on box: Singapore = 7200.9 Thailand = 7200.10)

 

[P3N1X0R]

seems i only have 3 identical 250gb drives but i have 7 250gb in total. theyre just diff models, like western digital some are BB some are LB and some are JB drives....

but i know i have 4 identical 120's maxtor drive.

 

[Lazn_Work]

I am not sure how well LSR (Linux Software Raid) handles non RE WD drives in RAID 5.. I know many on board RAID and PCI/PCI-e RAID cards don't like them because of their TLER issue.. What I find online says LSR doesn't play well with WD drives that are not RE drives, but like all things Linux that could change in a revision in a heartbeat.