Hardware Replacing HDD in RAID system

[Cyan]

I have a RAID1 with two HDD.
both drives are identical, and using 512byte/sector.

One of my HDD just died. (I hope it's not the mother board issue)

I'm trying to buy the same drive, but the website where I bought them doesn't sell these HDD anymore.
I guess I can't put a 4096byte/sector HDD in the RAID along with my 512B/sector drive?


I'm using WinXP pro SP2, I'm not even sure it works with 4K drives


Edit:
I found and bought one with the same Serial (ST2000DL003) on another website.
I hope it will be the same.

 

[Foxi4]

According to what I'm reading here, the RAID 1 pair does not have to consist of identical drives, but its capacity will be capped to the smallest drive in the pair as it's mirroring data. I'm not a 100% sure, but a difference on the basis of the sector size should not impact data allignment on the software side.

Windows offers 512 byte emulation (512e), which could possibly cover your bases, but that's for Vista and higher. Some 4K drives have such emulation schemes built-in, so that's worth looking into as well.

How much data do you have on that HDD? Perhaps it'd be time to make a backup and experiment? Worst case scenario, you're going to have to build a new array.

 

[Wisenheimer]

RAID 1 does not usually require using the same HDDs. Any HDD which is equal or bigger in size to the old drive should work.

The only three things to keep in mind are:

1) If one drive is larger, the extra space is wasted.
2) If one drive has slower write, read, seek, et cetera than the other, it will not perform as well as it would with two of the faster drives.
3) If you use drives from the same batch, they may share any manufacturing defect and fail around the same time.

 

[trumpet-205]

When a drive failed in RAID setup, most professional will replace the entire RAID setup rather than just swap the faulty drive. There are couple reasons why this is done,

* Possible failure during drive reconstruction.
* Copying silent corrupted file back to new drive (a possible problem with RAID 1)
* Drives used in RAID are from the same batch. When one failed it is possible others will fail too.

These days most 4K drive uses 512e emulation. So 4K should not have been a problem.

 

[Cyan]

Thanks.

I'm backing up as much as I can (in case I lose the second one too).
I have about 1TB used.
I bought one (I hope it will be the same model). If it's a 4k drive, I will know if it's compatible or not.
I should receive it in 1-2 days.


Like you mentioned, my 2 drives are from the same batch.
There are chance the other one will fail soon too.


Edit:
I received my new HDD.
it's the same model, so everything is fine.

After installing it, rebooting the PC, the BIOS seemed erased
Maybe the mother board batterie died?
First launch, it didn't remember it was in RAID and autodetected all drives one by one, as IDE.
in windows, it detected all new hardware, etc.
I had to reboot/re-set the BIOS correctly to put back RAID setup.
It's now reconstructing the data....