general_rookie wrote:
Make sure both hard drives are the same size and speed, however different manufacturers. Two different brands will guarantee they wont ever go bad at the same time.
First of all, two different brands of HDDs will not GUARANTEE they won't ever go bad at the same time. I think if you did a study you'd probably find HDD failure is often caused, in part, by the conditions the drive is operating in (hot, dusty, underpowered, etc) and drives purchased at the same time could fail at similar times. That said, it is at best educated speculation on my part. Granted, different HDD manufacturers can have different MTBFs (Mean Time Between Failures) for their different drives, but that doesn't mean drives with different MTBFs can't fail at the same time. What is sure is that different brand HDDs will not "guarantee they won't ever go bad at the same time".
Secondly, if one drive in your RAID0 fails, that array is disabled and you lose all of your data on it (unless you have it backed up). So it doesn't really matter if they fail at the same time or not, because one bad drive kills the array. That is not to say however that you can't still use the one good drive left in a new RAID0 with a new HDD after losing all the data on it.
Sorry if I'm coming off as a jerk, but I don't want anyone to get inaccurate information.
NasmNLH
*Edited to be less of a jerk. Sorry.
Last edited by NasmNLH (2006-08-03 14:31:27)