Do RAID drives have to be the same size?

In a RAID 1 configuration, the size of target disk must be greater or equal to the one of the source disk. Therefore the capacity of the array will be same as the one of the smallest size in the group. The only exception is a spanned volume.

Can RAID 1 use different size drives?

Most RAID controllers probably won’t let you use two different sized hard drives. However if it does, you will be limited to the amount of space of your smallest hard drive.

Can you do RAID 5 with different size drives?

You can use RAID 5 with different sized disks physically, but within the RAID features they all have to be identicle. What would happen in your case if you configured a RAID5 with all 6 disks, is that the RAID would use 6 x 2TB leaving the four 4TB drives with 2TB of free space.

Can RAID 6 have different size drives?

For a normal RAID, you can RAID different sized drives together just like you can with same-sized drives. The only “gotcha” is that the RAID will treat all drives in the array as if they were all the same size as your smallest drive.

Can you use different size hard drives in a server?

You can always mix drive sizes in RAID. And in plain RAID you always get the smallest common size from all drives. So in your case, each drive use 4TB. If you added one 1TB drive, all the drives would act as 1TB drives.

Can I RAID 2 different hard drives?

You can run different size and speed drives in a RAID configuration. However, the performance will be limited to the smallest and slowest drive. RAID = Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives.

Is using RAID worth it?

RAID is extremely useful if uptime and availability are important to you or your business. Backups will help insure you from a catastrophic data loss. But, restoring large amounts of data, like when you experience a drive failure, can take many hours to perform.

Can you RAID 5 with 2 drives?

You can indeed run a RAID 5 with only two drives but it’s degraded and a single bit failure on either drive will bring down that RAID. Dell calls this a RAID Puncture and the only recovery is to restore from backup.

What is the difference between RAID 1 and RAID 0?

The main difference between the RAID 0 and RAID 1 is that, In RAID 0 technology, Disk stripping is used. On the other hand, in RAID 1 technology, Disk mirroring is used. RAID 0 stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disk level 0. While RAID 1 stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disk level 1.

What is the difference between RAID 6 and RAID 10?

RAID 10 — also known as RAID 1+0 — is a nested RAID level, combining the benefits of RAID 1 and RAID 0. RAID 10 mirrors the data, then stripes the result across the disks. RAID 6 is a standard RAID level. It stripes the data and calculates parity twice, with the results stored in different blocks on the disks.

Can I mix hard drives in RAID?

Must hard drives in a RAID array be identical? No. It is perfectly valid to use hard drives from different manufacturers, model numbers, sizes, and rotational speed (spindle speed or RPM).