LogFAQs > #965591418

Dmess85 posted...

For RAID 10, do all the drives have to be the same size?

it may depend on the RAID controller. when I started I was under the impression that all of the drives had to be the same model not just size, but that doesn't seem to be the case. reading, some sources say that even if they have different sizes, the smallest drive will determine the size of the volume.

something I'll point out is, it is a bit cumbersome to implement. you do actually end up with 4 drives and 4 power cables going to them, and 4 data cables, and if one of the 8 data cable ends comes lose you will lose a drive and have to figure out which port is which drive to fix it and then rebuild the RAID after. and annoyingly SATA cables don't attach very securely. (maybe modern ones are better than the ones I have.)

also, depending on the hardware you have, hard reboots will result in long rebuild operations. (supposedly one of the benefits of "hardware RAID controllers" is that they have batteries and prevent this issue. can use UPS instead to protect against power outages, but that's not the only kind of hard reboot.) (rebuild is basically 1-2 hours running in the background. your computer is slower for those 1-2 hours. for NAS maybe it wouldn't matter since it wouldn't be the PC you're using.)