RAID 0 with different hdd brands?

edalbkrad · Apr 20, 2012

will i get problems if I use different brands for raid 0?
Would it be better to use the raid 0 drives as OS or just for programs and games?

ive got:

80GB WD Raptor
250GB WD caviar blue
500GB Seagate sata II 16mb cache
500GB Hitachi sata II 16mb cache

Im planning to add another 500gb or 1TB harddrive soon, so I could either buy another Seagate 500GB to get same brand or get a 1TB for files.

pengs · Apr 20, 2012

You can use any combination you like but if you use that array there will be some draw backs.

1. You will be limited to the slowest hard drive in the array (probably the Caviar Blue).
2. You will be limited to the lowest capacity drive in the array. 4x 80GB = 320GB usable.

Your going to be best off using the 2 500GB drives. If you use the 2 500's they would be best for games, but that's a lot of games. Totally up to you.

If you do the 2 500's and add a 3rd drive into the array, the 1TB would be wasted by 500GB's.

Kramy · Apr 20, 2012

Hmm... it's a tough call. There were quite a few 500GB generations. You say yours have 16MB cache? Must be one of the older gens...

I'd run HDTune on each of your drives, and then post screenshots of the Benchmark for each one. The free version of HDTune is fine for drives up to 1TB in size, so just use it.

http://www.hdtune.com/download.html

You should get a graph something like this:

If your drives match up in sequential speeds and access times, they're a good match for RAID. If not, then don't bother. One other thing to consider - it's possible that a new 1TB drive will outperform any RAID array that you can make with those - but I won't know for certain until I see benchmarks for each drive.

Boyd · Apr 20, 2012

I think both 500s should be fine with raid 0 together, but not with the other drives, in your shoes, i'd have both 500 drives in raid 0 and the others just ... there no raid UNLESS you dont need that much space and rather go with speed, thats when you can have the 250gb blue + 80gb raptor in raid 0 aswell, you will end up with ~1tb for both 500s and ~160 for the raptor and blue together.

edalbkrad · Apr 20, 2012

so if my understanding is correct.
If I use the two 500GB drives for raid 0, I will still get a total of 1TB except they can read/write faster?

So the best setup for me would be this?

80GB = OS and programs like adobe
250GB = files
2x500GB raid 0 = games and adobe premiere scratch disk

Kramy · Apr 20, 2012

Quote:

Originally Posted by edalbkrad

So the best setup for me would be this?

80GB = OS and programs like adobe
250GB = files
2x500GB raid 0 = games and adobe premiere scratch disk

Probably, yes.

Just keep in mind a few things:
1) RAID-0 has no redundancy. You have one data volume striped across two drives. If one fails, your data goes poof.

2) Multitasking is what drags HDD performance down. If you plan to do games and Adobe premiere stuff simultaneously, you'll probably get the best performance by having your drives run separately. But if you only do one at a time, then RAID-0 will give you a slight performance boost for whichever you're doing at that moment.
3) When you initialize RAID-0 both drives get cleared.

RAID 0 with different hdd brands?

edalbkrad

pengs

Kramy

Boyd

edalbkrad

Kramy

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