can you raid 2 drives of diff sizes?

[starbuck]

I have 2 drives, 160gb and 200gb. both are western digital caviar special editions so have same seek times etc.

Can I raid these two together?

[Firelord]

They'll be limited to 160GB so you'd only have 320GB instead of 360GB but should work

[starbuck]

is it worth doing though ie would I see a noticeable performance difference(amd 64 3000+, asus kv8, 1gb corsair xms 400, msi fx900, nec 2510a,plex premium writer)

[Stoo]

JBOD should be okay if the controller supports it..

[directhex]

RAID 0 will give a decrease in read and write times, at the cost of exponential increase in chance of data loss. RAID 1 would make reads faster and give data security - but you'd get 160Gb of space instead of 320Gb

[funnelhead]

I've had RAID 0 in my time (2 x 30gb, 2 x 60gb ) but these days Hard drives are so quick that RAID 0 ing them has very little increase in performance. Can't remember the site but loading a Far Cry level took 12.5 secs on 1 raptor, and 12 seconds on 2 raptors in raid 0. Not a great difference considering the risk ur putting ur data at.

In fact, if done properly , 2 separate drives can be quicker than raid 0. - you just have to make sure you spread your loads across the 2 of them. So eg Windows and music on one of them, Games and Vids on the other one. The advantagge here is that you can be seeking 2 diferent things at the same time. If you run p2p then this MUST be on the non-windows drive.

Given that you would lose 40 gigs and ur putting ur data at 2x risk, Plus the inconvenience that you can never just pop a hard drive out to take a mates to swap some stuff...... I would just run 2 separate drives.

I know thats not the fun answer you wanted Starbuck, but it be truth.,..

[funnelhead]

Some links for you to peruse and make up your own mind:

http://www.storagereview.com/article...0625TCQ_1.html

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=2101

Bear in mind alot of people swear these benchmarks are wrong tho lol.