RAID 1 Question

[jdbailey1206]

Quick question for the computer aficionados.  I want to run two hard drives in a RAID 1 configuration.   One drive is 500  GB's while the other is 640 GB's.   I have heard that this is possible  if you format the larger  drive  to be the same size as the smaller drive and leave the extra space on the larger hard drive as unallocated.  Let me know if anyone has done this and if anyone has had any known problems.   Thanks fellas.   

[spoot]

Yes, it'll simply be as big as the smallest drive in the array.

[Malenko]

Yes, it'll simply be as big as the smallest drive in the array.

^This. 


I'm pretty anal about my RAIDs, I prefer disks to match across size, brand , and model.

[jdbailey1206]

^This. 


I'm pretty anal about my RAIDs, I prefer disks to match across size, brand , and model.

I would love that to be the case Malenko but I am running a RAID on a budget.

[spoot]

I will throw this in there just in case......RAID is not backup....RAID is not backup......RAID is not backup.   

Saves you from certain types of hardware failures is all.   

[leapinlew]

I prefer different manufacturers when possible. I've gotten bad lots and ended up with hard drives that all fail very close in time frame to each other. I think that's what happened with my RAID5 that blew a drive and then lost another drive trying to rebuild the array to a hot spare.

I'm a little OCD about some things but keeping my hard drives the same isn't one of them.

[jdbailey1206]

I prefer different manufacturers when possible. I've gotten bad lots and ended up with hard drives that all fail very close in time frame to each other.

Never thought about this Lew.  We'll see how mine works out when I get my HD enclosure next week.

[dkersten]

I prefer different manufacturers when possible. I've gotten bad lots and ended up with hard drives that all fail very close in time frame to each other. I think that's what happened with my RAID5 that blew a drive and then lost another drive trying to rebuild the array to a hot spare.

I'm a little OCD about some things but keeping my hard drives the same isn't one of them.

I have seen this too, but I still prefer to stick to one brand, model, and size.  But then I don't touch raid any more unless it is in my work environment, and when you have 3 to 24 drives in an array, mixing and matching seems to be a bad idea. 

In my personal PC's I no longer care about the minor performance bump, particularly since SSD's became mainstream, and personal computers just get heavier with redundant drives. 

[leapinlew]

Agreed since the more drives you have, the more you'd probably lean away from RAID 5 anyhow. If I had a 3 drive array, it wouldn't bother me if they were all 3 different manufacturers.

[lilshawn]

you haven't lived till you've put everything you have on a raid 0...and not have a backup plan.


also, totally unrelated  , i'll be shutting down my NAS server (raid 0) that has been online the last 500 or so days now... to move in the next few weeks....hopefully it comes back online. I'll be buying a drive to back it up before shutdown....just in case.

I should probably buy a few new drives and change that to a raid 10 instead.