Striping across dissimilar disks

[Michael West <web@mitzit.net>]

 I have heard that when using raid the drives should be a similar as
     possible.  Why is that?  Is it just because you are slowing down
     the fast disk(s) to the rate of the slower one(s)?  Does it have to
     do with geometry? ( meaning disk geometry, not Euclid )

     I have two disks I was thinking about software raid striping.

     In response to `hdparm -t /dev/$device` one averages 18 Mb/sec, the
     other a nice 28 Mb/sec.

     Is this going to cause data loss / disk crashes?  Should I be very
     afraid?

     Or is it that I cannot expect much more then 33 Mb/sec from the
     stripe so it is not worth the effort?

     ~Michael



-- 
"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is caned."