Raid newb question

Android412 · Oct 11, 2009

If I have 2 different size drives, 200GB+300GB, is there a way to combine them so they look like 1 big drive?

I seem to remember reading somewhere awhile ago that you could, but they had to be identical drives, not sure if I'm remembering that right though.

And if by chance 1 of them craps out is everything gone, or just what was physically written to THAT specific drive?

American Zombie · Oct 11, 2009

If you use Raid 0 with two different size drives then the size will be the smaller size x 2.
In your example that would be the 200GB drive so the size of the raid partition would end up 400GB.
Yes, you would lose 100GB.

With Raid 0 if even one drive fails you lose all data.

fitz · Oct 12, 2009

with two drives, your choices are either raid 0 or raid 1 (stripe or mirror respectively).

RAID 0 - your total usable would be 400GB as Zombie described. And as he also mentioned, if one drive fails, you lose the whole array and all the data on both drives.

RAID 1 - in a mirror, your total usable would be 200GB. However, as all your data is mirrored on both drives, if you lose one drive, all your data would still be intact and usable on the other drive.

Android412 · Oct 12, 2009

ok thanks.

Turning a 300 into a 400 doesn't seem very good considering the down side of losing everything if one craps out, and still having another 100gb drive.

Guess I'll stick with 2 separate drives.

Johnny · Oct 12, 2009

If you have two different drive sizes you can use JBOD raid. The thing to remember is that it is not redundant, so if one crashes you lose everything ...