# Do I have to use the same model hard drive for a RAID?



## raiderxx

What the title says. For my WHS server, do I need to buy the same exact hard drive for a RAID? I've got two WD Black 2TBs, but they are sort of expensive... If I got a 2tb Blue, would that be ok? Or if I got a Seagate 2tb? Do they HAVE to be Blacks? I am planning on doing a hardware RAID 5 and plan on keeping on adding drives over time. Thanks!


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## Triangle

I would not get Seagate drives...
Hardware or software RAID? You should be able to do it with software RAID, but not with hardware. I have had that issue. We have had a hdd fail and got a different drive from the rest and it couldn't " Re-Establish " the setup...


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## killabytes

No. You don't need to match drives.


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## raiderxx

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *Triangle;13958737*
> I would not get Seagate drives...
> Hardware or software RAID? You should be able to do it with software RAID, but not with hardware. I have had that issue. We have had a hdd fail and got a different drive from the rest and it couldn't " Re-Establish " the setup...


Dang.. I'm planning on using hardware, since I have this LSI card and I would like to use it. Although I just looked at the specs, and it doesn't look like it supports RAID 5.... Would RAID 10E do close to the same?

And would I need the EXACT same model? Or would any 2tb WD Black drive work?


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## killabytes

I've never matched drives. I have a mix of Hitachi, Seagate and Western Digital all in 10TB 3ware hardware RAID 5.

No issues.

I also have several mixed drives in software RAID totally 2TB. No issues.


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## the_beast

which WHS version? If it's v1, just use Drive Extender rather than RAID10. Much more flexible, much easier, supported (hardware RAID under WHS v1 is not supported at all), and you get the same amount of useable drive space.

With DE you also get to choose whether to protect files - so you don't have to waste space on redundant downloads folders, scratch space, etc


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## citruspers

You don't neccesarily need to use the same drives for a RAID setup, but you might get odd performance if you use different ones.


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## blupupher

They don't need to be the exact same drives, but need to be similar (Size and RPM mainly, cache makes little difference) The more similar they are, the better the performance of the RAID.

As said though, if using WHS v1, Drive Extender is easier (and IMO better and more flexible).

Also, I have heard you can't use RAID in WHS v1 (but have also heard you can)







.


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## raiderxx

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *the_beast;13960432*
> which WHS version? If it's v1, just use Drive Extender rather than RAID10. Much more flexible, much easier, supported (hardware RAID under WHS v1 is not supported at all), and you get the same amount of useable drive space.
> 
> With DE you also get to choose whether to protect files - so you don't have to waste space on redundant downloads folders, scratch space, etc


Quote:


> Originally Posted by *blupupher;13962418*
> They don't need to be the exact same drives, but need to be similar (Size and RPM mainly, cache makes little difference) The more similar they are, the better the performance of the RAID.
> 
> As said though, if using WHS v1, Drive Extender is easier (and IMO better and more flexible).
> 
> Also, I have heard you can't use RAID in WHS v1 (but have also heard you can)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> .


Oh.. Well drat. I haven't even installed WHS yet, I was I guess sort of assuming that it would accept a RAID card. I was hoping to make use of it.. Will I still be able to use the card as just a SATA card? I only have two SATA ports on my mobo..


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## IBuyJunk

Depends on how you are doing it. I have seen some controllers (in SUN servers, mainly) that won't create a raid or even boot if the hard drives are the same but a different firware / hardware rev different.


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## the_beast

You can use the RAID card (after all WHS is just Server 2003 with a few GUIs and some of the more exciting features disabled), it's just not supported by MS. And if you only want to use RAID1 or similar anyway there are really no reasons to pick a hardware card over the built-in duplication offered by WHS. Just use the RAID card as an HBA to pass the drives to the OS - that way if your server has an issue you can just move the drives to any other Windows machine and read them with no issues (they are basically standard NTFS drives that Windows just maps into the Drive Extender interface for you).


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## raiderxx

Alright. Thanks for the info! I just threw in WHS, and guess what? Im an idiot and didn't read the minimum specs.. The computer I was planning on running it on only has 2 sticks of 512meg ram.. So I either have to find another gig of DDR400 ram or upgrade the mobo/cpu/RAM anyways. xD

Or maybe I'll try out Server R2...


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## blupupher

Are you using WHS v1 or WHS 2011?
WHS only needs 512 RAM to work (1 gig is better though).
WHS 2011 requires 2gb minimum.


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## the_beast

1GB is more than enough for WHS v1...


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