Mixing 512e and 512n drives in a RAID 6

[sheckylovejoy2]

I have a RAID 6 with 18 drives + 2 hot spares. They are Ultrastar 7k4000 HUS724030ALE640 which is the 512e version of the 6G SATA. I need to add 4 more drives, but I think HGST is discontinuing the 7K4000 and I am having a little trouble finding them at a decent price. There are many HUS724030ALA640 (512n version) available at reasonable prices. Is it OK to mix?

Mac Pro 2010 5,1
12-core 3.33 Ghz
64 GB RAM
OS X 10.10.5
Areca 1882ix-24

Thanks

 

[drtweak]

Deep down after looking them up I would say yes you would be fine (They are exactly same specs but just a different model number)

Honestly I think you will be fine, but in the end it is up to you. Maybe see if any one else chimes in. I have does a few RAID's with different disk without issue but not on the scale you are doing!

 

[sheckylovejoy2]

Deep down after looking them up I would say yes you would be fine (They are exactly same specs but just a different model number)

Honestly I think you will be fine, but in the end it is up to you. Maybe see if any one else chimes in. I have does a few RAID's with different disk without issue but not on the scale you are doing!

I ordered them, we'll see how it goes. I found a Dell white paper on the transition to 4k. The basic TL;DR

Mixing these is fine. 4k and 512 is more dicey but still fine. Either way, the 512e has a small write performance hit with very small files, partition misalignment, and files not multiples of 4k.