Pata + Sata RAID possible ?

[Contact]

I'm thinking of buying new, bigger hdd and RAID them. The thing is I'm not sure if it's possible to RAID between pata and sata controllers ?

I've read that: "All raid hds must be the same size,and should be the same brand,working
off the same controller,SATA or SCSI"

is it really so ?

[DeepIron]

You "might" be able to pull it off using a "software RAID" application but the performance would not be good, and is generally much slower than just writing a single drive. For the fewest problems and the best performance, you should use the same HD hardware interface, PATA, SATA or SCSI and match your HDs. Use the same brand and same size drives if possible.

By way of example: I run a SATA RAID that uses only 2 360Gb drives on my current PC in a RAID 0 configuration. RAID 0 just stripes the data across the 2 drives, increasing the apparent size of the drive to just less than 720Gb and provides no fault tolerance. This is OK, as I wanted more performance (RAID 0 is fast) and I'm not worried about losing the data in the event of a failure of this array.

I have another disk array running in a server that uses 5 300Gb 7200RPM drives arranged in a RAID 5 configuration using a SCSI LVM hardware interface that serves as a data store array. RAID 5 is fault tolerant...

[CaptainHaplo]

DeepIron has some good points. Before you start doing raid, you need do tell us WHY your wanting to do it. Are you looking for speed, data redundancy or both? If both your looking at Raid 0+1 or Raid 3 at a minimum - with 5/6 being preferable. Though that gets into 4 disks or more. Raid 0 can be done with just 2 - though your doing nothing but getting a speed increase, and no data recovery.

If you need fault tolerance - then you can go with a software raid over multiple disk controllers. If your looking for speed - avoid ALL software raid solutions. Unfortunately, I don't know of any raid cards that have both controller sets on them. Your best bet if you wanted to raid would be a dedicated raid controller card - and make both drives sata. (Do they even make raid IDE cards anymore?) Given the cost of drives today, this may be the best option for you.

[Contact]

I am short of free disk space so I thought if I gonna buy new sata hdd will I be able to Raid 0 it with my old pata HD, this way avoiding throwing it away.. but if it will negatively hit on a performance or speed or both. Guess I'm going to use sata HD alone.

[DeepIron]

I am short of free disk space so I thought if I gonna buy new sata hdd will I be able to Raid 0 it with my old pata HD, this way avoiding throwing it away.. but if it will negatively hit on a performance or speed or both. Guess I'm going to use sata HD alone.Well, on the other hand, a 500Gb SATA drive is fairly inexpensive these days (my wife uses two of them in her PC but not in any RAID config) so the tradeoff for simple data storage and single drive performance is probably not an issue anyway.

Cheers!

[Contact]

Yep, thanks for helping to decide :up:

[CaptainHaplo]

Leave the old drive in the box - clean install on the SATA (even multiboot as I am doing) and then format the old drive - use it for backup of critical storage stuff. Like for me, I have a slew of family pics and stuff that I keep a backup of, just in case.

[Zachstar]

Keep away from software RAID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It is usually very slow and its data redundancy is easily questionable.

Many motherboards these days have hardware raid support. A mobo I was looking at had a whopping 8!!!! SATA ports with an onboard raid controller.

[Zachstar]

I am short of free disk space so I thought if I gonna buy new sata hdd will I be able to Raid 0 it with my old pata HD, this way avoiding throwing it away.. but if it will negatively hit on a performance or speed or both. Guess I'm going to use sata HD alone.

I am running out of space myself but I do not want to attempt a RAID unless on a fresh install of everything.

If the new drive is fast I would just reinstall the major programs on to it (Steam, FSX or whatever else is 2+GB in size) Let the old drive boot the PC and your base programs and browsing. And call it a day. Raid 0 without 2 SATA drives is just not worth it.