[Gllug] [OT] RAID controllers and hard disk speeds

[Rich Walker]

Jason Clifford <jason at ukpost.com> writes:

> On Thu, 8 Aug 2002, Rev Simon Rumble wrote:
> 
> > It's not optimal.  The faster drives will be slowed down to the speed
> > of the slowest.  In other words, the fast drives will be waiting
> > around for the slower ones.  You will get no speed increase from the
> > faster drive.
> > 
> > There are many people who say that you should stick with identical
> > drives.
> 
> This is very good advise. Do remember that some RAID controllers will barf 
> on non-identical disks in horrible ways.

Erk. Thats ... really really broken ...

> 
> If you are going to the trouble and expense of hardware RAID (and I very 
> much recommend it for any data that is important to you) go for the 
> optimal setup.

Erm; given drive failure modes, shurely the optimal mix must be a
collection of drives of the same speed and size *from different
manufacturers*. Certainly, if configuring a RAID-1 mirror, I would never
use the same manufacturers drives for a pair, on the grounds that I
would be sure to trigger the same firmware bug in both of them on the
same day... 

cheers, Rich.


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rich walker | technical person | Shadow Robot Company | rw at shadow.org.uk
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