RAID 5

[Bozo]

I have a 3Ware SATA controller card and 3 160GB hard drives. I would like to set these up in a RAID 5 configeration. Only one small problem. I have 2 WD hard drives and 1 Seagate hard drive. I know you are not supposed to mix the hard drives, but has anybody ever done this?

Thanks,
Bozo :joker:

 

[Mercutio]

Yes.

You will be sad when one of the drives fails and the controller won't resync on the replacement drive.

 

[ddrueding]

Ditto. Keep them the same. You could do a RAID 1 with the WD drives; then they might be as reliable as the Seagate, and you have the same 320GB of fairly reliable storage

 

[Stereodude]

Yes.

You will be sad when one of the drives fails and the controller won't resync on the replacement drive.

Except the 3Ware cards don't care. It will use any 3 drives and work based on the smallest of the 3 drives. I've replaced two of the 200GB WD in my 6 drive RAID-5 array with 250GB drives and had no issues.

 

[Howell]

Except the 3Ware cards don't care. It will use any 3 drives and work based on the smallest of the 3 drives. I've replaced two of the 200GB WD in my 6 drive RAID-5 array with 250GB drives and had no issues.

Were they 250G WDs or.....?

 

[Mercutio]

Except the 3Ware cards don't care...

In my experience, RAID5 arrays, whether hardware or software, wind up having issues when all the drives are not the same. Generally the RAID5s I've dealt with have been SCSI arrays on OEM controllers (IBM, Dell, HP), but mixed-drive arrays seem to be problematic generally.
I've seen enough issues that I wouldn't advise anyone to try building one that way. After all, the data you're storing was important enough to store on an array in the first place, right?

 

[Pradeep]

I wouldn't even mix different firmware revisions of the same drive on an array, if at all avoidable.

 

[LiamC]

http://www.miracleas.com/BAARF/RAID5_versus_RAID10.txt
http://www.baarf.com/

I've had to sit through the painful process at work (several times!) where the RAID5 array was rebuilding itself after a drive failure. Basically, no LAN connectivity for the day==no work for the day.

RAID10 if you must RAID

 

[Stereodude]

Were they 250G WDs or.....?

Yes, but how is that relevant? They're no the same drive. Even the 4 200's on it are not identical. They have slightly different firmwares and model numbers.

 

[Stereodude]

I've had to sit through the painful process at work (several times!) where the RAID5 array was rebuilding itself after a drive failure. Basically, no LAN connectivity for the day==no work for the day.

RAID10 if you must RAID

My RAID-5 array is usable while it's rebuilding, so I'm not sure what the problem is.

 

[LiamC]

My RAID-5 array is usable while it's rebuilding, so I'm not sure what the problem is.

At a guess, number of users.

 

[Bozo]

Of the few RAID 5 rebuilds I've been involved with, you could still access the server, although it was slow. IBMs
The servers with Seagate Cheetahs, there was hardly any slowdown at all. And the rebuild was fast. (Adaptec controller)

Bozo :joker: