[homeslice]

Is it possible to play with the block sizes that a raid controller sends out to a hard drive, as to use a small hard drive with a large hard drive, and not loss a lot of space. Or is this impossible and just go with jbod.

 

[xms]

Quote:

Originally Posted by homeslice Is it possible to play with the block sizes that a raid controller sends out to a hard drive, as to use a small hard drive with a large hard drive, and not loss a lot of space. Or is this impossible and just go with jbod.

I'm not sure i understand what you are asking, but with most raid controllers, when you set up an array, they will allow you to specify the block size.

If you have got reasonable size hard disks, i wouldnt worry to much about the wasted space, and instead look to the performance differences with the different block sizes as they all have their bonuses depending on what you are using your machine for.

 

[Lando95]

You can specify any block size you want. Well, not any, but usually anywhere from 8kb up to 256k. For what I do, I have found that the best block size is 16kb. I use my comp mainly for gaming. Now about Raid. You can use two different size hd's, but the raid software will only see the size of the smallest drive. For example: a 120gb hd and a 80gb hd in raid 0 would equal 160gb of storage. Take the size of the smallest drive x 2. 80 x 2 = 160gb of storage.

 

[slow'puter]

I tried setting a Raid 0 setup with my old 108Gb HDD and my new 250Gb HDD, but I realized that I had no idea what I was doing. Is any tutorial or DIY guide out there for me to read?

 

[homeslice]

I wanted to put two hard drives in raid but didnt want to waste any space. I mean the two drives recieve different block sizes, and a 40 in raid 0 with a 60 for total space of 100. I dont know if this is possible so decided i would ask.

 

[zother]

That's not possible. If you want that do JOBD. The storage you will get is 80gb. The 20gb from the 60gb drive will be lost.

The performance is the best when drive are identical. If diffrent drives then some speed is lost because of diffrent seek times and plater densities.

 

[nayo_450]

it should work out 2 100gb drive after all Raid does stand for random arrray of inexpensive drives, that is different from SED or even TED, Single expensive Drive, and Twin Expensive Drives.(respectavely)

 

[Lando95]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nayo_450 it should work out 2 100gb drive after all Raid does stand for random arrray of inexpensive drives, that is different from SED or even TED, Single expensive Drive, and Twin Expensive Drives.(respectavely)

Zopher is correct. If he puts the two drives in JBOD, it will equal 100gb, but he loses any advantage of using raid in the first place. When using raid 0 or 1, both drives must be the same size, or the raid controller will read them as the size of the smaller drive, as stated before.

 

[nayo_450]

i think the reason he asked is raiding 2 cards as one is the way to give yourself a crap lode of space at the expense of only one drive letter, after all there are only 26 letters...., you also got to got to remember not eveyone can afford to raid 2 rapters 2gether in raid zero, that by the way is what i had called a TEDa or in ths case with an additionl 300gb storage hdd, it would be a threada,thats Three Expensive Drives Array.

 

[slow'puter]

So, could it be possible to partition the larger drive to the size of the smaller one and then set up a RAID 0? Would the second partition on the larger drive become wasted space or an actual logical drive outside the RAID array?

 

[nayo_450]

after much research i have come to the conclusion that i dont have a clue
on this toppic,it will work in theory, but in practice not so good....
http://www.acnc.com/04_01_01.html
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/...erf_Stripe.htm
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/...eLevel0-c.html
http://www.storagereview.com/guide20...ltLevel01.html

 

[slow'puter]

After some thought, I have decided that RAID is not for me at the moment. Maybe when I get one of those SATA 300GB drives...

 

[zother]

Quote:

Originally Posted by slow'puter So, could it be possible to partition the larger drive to the size of the smaller one and then set up a RAID 0? Would the second partition on the larger drive become wasted space or an actual logical drive outside the RAID array?

To the best of my knowledge it's not possible to do what you want. RAID is on the hardware level and actual knows the drive connect and doesn't care about partions.

Even if it was possible I would not suggest doing that because it will not inprove performance at all. And even worse it will make the sytem very slow in moving data from one partion to another.

 

[homeslice]

I dont think you could partition the drives, as raid is a hardware thing, but could you send two drives different amounts of data, like sending a 40 giger 40% of data and a 60 gig 60% of the data effectively making a raid system of two different size drives, and not lossing any space (in raid 0). I have not heard of a system of this type before.

 

[Lando95]

Quote:

Originally Posted by homeslice I dont think you could partition the drives, as raid is a hardware thing, but could you send two drives different amounts of data, like sending a 40 giger 40% of data and a 60 gig 60% of the data effectively making a raid system of two different size drives, and not lossing any space (in raid 0). I have not heard of a system of this type before.

You can partition them in any way you want to, as long as you set up the raid first. Also, it is impossible to send one hd more data in a raid system. The raid controller sees both hd's are one big drive and doesnt distiguish between the two. I will repeat again guys,

Yes, you can have 2 different size drives in a Raid setup(assuming they are the same speed and cache size), but the total size will be double that of the smallest drive, no if's and's or but's.

And YES, you will lose that extra storage space on the larger drive.

 

[shermstix]

Lando's right. Plus there is little performance gain to be had from a RAID array anyway. You would do yourself right to get the Maxtor DiamondMAX plus 10. That baby is a monster and has 16MB of cache.

Side-note: If you are using a RAID add-in card, your performance will actually decrease with it because you are forcing your drives to share bandwidth with the rest of the PCI cards....

 

[slow'puter]

If I have to go through the hassle of saving stuff, reformatting and re-installing, I am not doing this. And I believe I read somewhere else that all existing data is erradicated when setting up the RAID.

 

[Lando95]

Quote:

Originally Posted by slow'puter If I have to go through the hassle of saving stuff, reformatting and re-installing, I am not doing this. And I believe I read somewhere else that all existing data is erradicated when setting up the RAID.

^^ Yeah, you have to reformat and reinstall, so you do lose everything. But once you have it up and running, you will never go back.