4 HDD's - but at different times?

I am going to buy 4 hdd's for a RAID setup. Am I right in saying I should get four different brands in one go or the same brand at different times/retailers so I don't have any drives made from the same 'batch'? Will this minimize the odds of two drives failing at the same time due to the same MTBF?

Was just thinking of getting 4 x 300/320 Gb drives as this seems to be the sweetspot price point for drives right now. Or if not, then maybe 3 x 400Gb and buy another 400 Gb sometime later.

I don't think it is something anyone can answer with authority to be honest.

What RAID setting are you looking to use anyway?

you want same brand + model, otherwise the performance won't be great.

I'm guessing with 4 drives, your having a RAID 5 (stripped + parity) so one can fail.

If your really worried, buy SCSI, the MTBF is normally much much higher, plus i tend to get the fealing that the customer care people care when a SCSI drive fails. I've had 2 WD drives fail, different batches, same model. But i'd always get the same model for the problems mentioned above.

Seagate have these nifty new 10k rpm HDDs that are tiny, take little power, make 'less' sound and give off less heat. If you've got the dosh, a nice SAS setup :)

If not, get 4 seagates about 300gig is the best buy right now £ per GB (or rather was a fortnight ago) and set one parity. The brand is my personal preferance.

Same brand + model, i would go with the same batch actually, how much is the odd the the whole batch gonna fail anyway. TheAnimus, can you point me to those nifty Seagate u mentioned, are the SCSI ?

Thanks for the input - I am going to use raid 5. Been reading up about software raiding on linux, getting ready to install. Interested about those Seagates simply out of curiosity - not got the $$$ to buy though.