Raid5 with HDD of different model.

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pettinz

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May 1, 2018
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Hi, i have two Western Digital RED 8TB (WD80EFZX). I need to buy other two disk and build a software RAID5 with the others. Now, the WD80EFZX serie have been replaced by WD80EFAX (Western Digital RED 8TB). I use a LSI-92118i in ITmode and I will setup the raid using mdadm. Do I have problem if two disks of four are of the same brand, the same size, both RED, but different model?
 

i386

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Mar 18, 2016
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Do I have problem if two disks of four are of the same brand, the same size, both RED, but different model?
Hard to answer.

The red drives are "nas optimized", they are made for certain workloads. When the workload matches that criteria I would not expect different behaviour from different red models.
 

pettinz

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May 1, 2018
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The red drives are "nas optimized", they are made for certain workloads. When the workload matches that criteria I would not expect different behaviour from different red models.
I have a question. The WD80EFAX are from 2018, they "should be" the updated version of the WD80EFZX from 2016. Now, who built a RAID of several disks in 2016, using the WD80EFZX serie, and now in 2018 a disk fails, does he have to change all the disks because of WD80EFAX? It seems absurd.
I'm not sure I explained well, English is not my first lang.
 

i386

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Mar 18, 2016
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Now, who built a RAID of several disks in 2016, using the WD80EFZX serie, and now in 2018 a disk fails, does he have to change all the disks because of WD80EFAX?
No, just replace the failed drive with another driver with the same specs.
 

EffrafaxOfWug

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Feb 12, 2015
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There's nothing catastrophically wrong with replacing discs with different models or brands to be honest - I've got a few arrays that are a mix of WD greens, WD reds and Toshiba NAS drives (and in the past I've wasted space by having mdadm arrays with drives of different sizes as well). Just be warned that if the performance characteristics of the drive change markedly, or if performance across all the drives is very different, it will likely slow down your whole array - only as strong as the weakest link, etc.
 
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msg7086

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May 2, 2017
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WD80EFZX, WD80EFAX, WD80EMAZ, WD80EZAZ

They are all the same base model (HGST He series) and behave similarly. You would have no problem mix and match those drives in an array.

And it's even better to have different batches and models in an array to avoid simultaneous failures from same batch of drives.

You may have to enable TLER for better RAID support for some of those models as they are disabled by default.