Peter Kjellstrom wrote:
On Saturday 28 July 2007, Johnny Hughes wrote:
Alexander Georgiev wrote:
...
Ok, and should I mix disks from different vendors? I have read somewhere that this augments the reliability of the array, lowering the probability of 2 disks and more go down simultaneously?
Not necessarily from different vendors as much as from different build lots, etc.
The theory is ... items build from the same components at the same time and the same place should fail/EOL at about the same time (all things being equal).
In practice, I have not seen that.
I havn't seen that either. But what I have seen is a raid controller acting up as a function of some random micro property of a specific drive model. So, I would very much not want more than one type of drive in a raid as that would double the amount of strangeness the controller would have to deal with.
/Peter
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Yeah don't mix the drive manufacturers - you are more prone to faults or "uknowns" because you are mixing two different drives from two different vendors. Always stick with the same brand, and try to get them all at once.
And, if you can, try your hardest to think about shelling out the extra cash for a hardware raid controller. If you are serious about your data, the extra $200 for an LSI Logic MegaRAID 150 4/6 port controller is a small investment for your data.
Also, if this is for a Postfix server, you're going to want RAID10, if you can. It's much faster for read/write access than RAID5.
HTH
Patrick