RAID technology, since its original design, never required identical drives. More specifically, every hard drive attached to a controller (RAID or otherwise) always operates completely independently of every other hard drive attached to that controller..
Then, does RAID 1 require identical drives?
Drives don't have to be the same. THe new one only needs to be larger. Identical is ideal, but no RAID requires identical drives.
do RAID 5 drives need to be identical? 1) Use every drive as a separate node in the RAID-5 array. This virtual drive can serve as a single drive in your RAID-5 array. Once one of these drives fails, the whole virtual drive is considered faulty. So please note you will need 3 virtual disks of the same size.
Also to know, do RAID drives have to be the same model?
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. 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.
Can you raid two different hard drives?
A Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) puts multiple hard drives together to improve on what a single drive can do on its own. Depending on how you configure a RAID, it can increase your computer's speed while giving you a single "drive" that can hold as much as all of the drives combined.
Related Question Answers
Can you mix drive sizes in a raid?
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 you RAID 0 different size drives?
A RAID 0 can be created with disks of differing sizes, but the storage space added to the array by each disk is limited to the size of the smallest disk. For example, if a 100 GB disk is striped together with a 350 GB disk, the size of the array will be 200 GB (100 GB × 2).What is difference between RAID 0 and RAID 1?
RAID 0 vs. RAID 1. RAID 1 offers redundancy through mirroring, i.e., data is written identically to two drives. RAID 0 offers no redundancy and instead uses striping, i.e., data is split across all the drives. This means RAID 0 offers no fault tolerance; if any of the constituent drives fails, the RAID unit fails.Can you raid different size SSD?
RAID requires equal sizes on all drives in the array, and will only use part of any larger drives to make them match the smallest drive in the array. So, if you did put the 240GB and 480GB into a RAID, you would get 2x240GB (480GB total) which is pretty pointless.How many drives do you need for RAID 1?
two drives
Can you do RAID 5 with different size drives?
Yes, in a RAID5 array the smallest physical volume (disk or partition) will define the size of the array, so any extra space on larger volumes in the array is not used. You should not see any issues with drives of different speeds other than the fact the the slower drive(s) will reduce average performance.How does RAID 1 work?
The drives are essentially mirror images of each other, so if one drive fails, the other one can take over and provide access to the data that's stored on that drive. While RAID 1 uses two drives, RAID 10 involves at least four drives and combines the mirroring of RAID 1 with the striping of RAID 0.What are the different RAID levels?
The most common types are RAID 0 (striping), RAID 1 (mirroring) and its variants, RAID 5 (distributed parity), and RAID 6 (dual parity). RAID levels and their associated data formats are standardized by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) in the Common RAID Disk Drive Format (DDF) standard.Does RAID 10 need identical drives?
In RAID 10, do all drives need to be the same specification in terms of size, speed, latency, etc? The only absolute requirement for matching drive specs in a RAID 10 array is that the drives must be of the same architecture, e.g., all SAS or SATA.How does RAID 10 work?
RAID 10, also known as RAID 1+0, is a RAID configuration that combines disk mirroring and disk striping to protect data. It requires a minimum of four disks and stripes data across mirrored pairs. As long as one disk in each mirrored pair is functional, data can be retrieved.What is raid6?
RAID 6, also known as double-parity RAID, uses two parity stripes on each disk. It allows for two disk failures within the RAID set before any data is lost. This configuration offers very high fault- and drive-failure tolerance. It is used for environments that need long data retention periods, such as archiving.How do I increase volume in RAID 5?
If the RAID controller support to expand RAID 5, you need to insert a new hard disk into the existing hardware RAID and organize this RAID using the RAID controller. Some unallocated space will appear on this RAID. Then you can expand the RAID partition with the unallocated space.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.How many hard drives do you need for RAID 5?
3 drives
How does RAID 5 work with 4 drives?
Disk striping combined with parity provides RAID 5 with redundancy and reliability. RAID 5 used parity instead of mirroring for data redundancy. When data is written to a RAID 5 drive, the system calculates parity and writes that parity into the drive.What is the difference between RAID 5 and RAID 6?
RAID 6. RAID 6 uses both striping and parity techniques but unlike RAID 5 utilizes two independent parity functions which are then written to two member disks. Typically, one of these parity functions is the same as in RAID 5 (xor function), while the second is more complex. RAID 6 is rather expensive storage option.Can you partition a RAID 5 array?
RAID 5 can be realized by Disk Array Controller or some professional disk management software. After converting basic disk to dynamic disk, we can partition RAID 5 with professional dynamic disk manager. RAID 5 volume guarantees data security. And RAID 5 volume cannot include boot partition or system partition.How does RAID storage work?
RAID works by placing data on multiple disks and allowing input/output (I/O) operations to overlap in a balanced way, improving performance. This allows overlapped disk I/O across drives. Disk mirroring and disk striping can be combined on a RAID array. Mirroring and striping are used together in RAID 01 and RAID 10.What is raid50?
RAID 50, also known as RAID 5+0, combines distributed parity (RAID 5) with striping (RAID 0). It requires a minimum of six drives. This RAID level offers better write performance, increased data protection and faster rebuilds than RAID 5. 
