Help w/ RAID Array

[jrstokes]

I am getting ready to set up a RAID Array but this is my first time doing anything with RAID. I know how to get into the BIOS and change settings and I know with two hard drives, I should do RAID 1. However, I just have a few questions before I do this. First off, I am an idiot and did not notice that my first hard drive I got when I built the computer has a 32 MB Cache:

Caviar Blue 1TB 7,200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive WD10EALX - OEM

I noticed it only had a 32 MB CACHE when I went to get another one. I then asked for the version with a 64 MB CACHE (WD1002FAEX), paid for it and left. Will these two hard drives work together in RAID if they have different sized caches? Please give me any info/experience you may have with this or anything with RAID would be helpful, thanks.

 

[CCurtis]

The short answer is yes, they'll work. Onboard cache is internal to the drive, and as long as the drives are the same size, then RAID 1 (mirror) should work fine. I don't think it would make much difference, but the drive with the larger cache should be the primary drive just for efficiency's sake.

 

[F5ing]

I am getting ready to set up a RAID Array but this is my first time doing anything with RAID. I know how to get into the BIOS and change settings and I know with two hard drives, I should do RAID 1.

I may be misreading you, but just because you've got two hard drives doesn't really mean you should do any sort of RAID unless you've got a real reason to do so. It adds complexity that needs to be managed. I wouldn't consider it a valid data backup method either (just in case you may have been thinking that).

 

[DeaconFrost]

You add the risk of corruption because the drives won't be reading and writing at the same speed.

I can save you the time and say to not bother. There's no point in running RAID of any kind of asingle user desktop. You won't get any performance increase with a striped array, and as mentioned above, mirroring isn't a good backup method to secure your data.