Crossing different WD HDD's in Raid 1 (Black & Blue)

[TheOnlyCraig]

Hello, I am one component away from finishing my first build (Specs at the bottom), this is not a gaming build YET, however I have a quick question for future upgrades, simply and openly, can you use a 1TB WD Black drive, in raid 1 with a WD 1TB Blue drive, whilst OS etc is on an SSD?

Specs:
Corsair Carbide 300r
Msi gaming 5
Corsair RM650
Corsair H75
HyperX Fury 120GB SSD
HyperX Fury 8GB (2x4GB) Red
TP Link 4800
Intel core i7 4790k
8 Fans, 4x140mm(2 LED) 4x120mm

Upgrades:
Nvidia GTX 970 Gigabyte G1 Gaming (Or MSI TwinFrozr?)
Raid 1 controller
WD Caviar Blue 1TB
HyperX Fury 8GB Red

 

[laviniuc]

yes, but the speed of the raid will be = the speed of the blue drive.

 

[TheOnlyCraig]

yes, but the speed of the raid will be = the speed of the blue drive.

Thank you for answering so promptly, but I will not loose any speed when it comes to loading data on and off of the Black drive, its just that the Raid with the Blue drive will copy over at it's own pace? Or will I loose performance with the Black?

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there, TheOnlyCraig!

You should use identical HDDs in RAID configurations, otherwise you will lose the performance as laviniuc already mentioned.
And to answer your question directly: You will definitely lose the performance of the Black. Just because the specs of the 1 TB version of both WD Blue and WD Black overlap doesn't mean that the performance of the Blue is the same as the Black. The RAID will be restricted to the "smallest"/weakest drive in the array. Different speed drives cause sync issues as well, which will result in more latency. We have specific RAID drives that are designed for this kind of environment and such workload, and those are the WD Reds. You can read more about them here: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=pqtpnU
As for the support of the desktop drives in RAID arrays, you should read this: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=KkH2Ai
But crossing those two drives might result in performance issues and data loss. I strongly recommend choosing one or the other for RAID 1.

Hope I helped. let me know if you have more questions!
SuperSoph_WD