I'm upgrading a friends computer to a raid (forget if it's 1 or 0) but a mirrored config. My only problem is that I can find the same model number but the part # is different and I cannot find the same exact part # is this a problem?
The hard drive in question is a Hitachi Deskstar T7250 (HDT725025VLA380) MODEL: 0A33662. The hard drive I
find online has the same HDT725025VLA380 BUT the part # is different it's part # 0A33423 both are 250gb. I'm just trying to avoid buying 2 new hard drives if I can help it but I just want to know if these 2 drives would be close enough to run in a raid mirror configuration?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

This is a compaq presario SR5130NX computer. It's an asus mobo M2N68-LA. I'm gonna need a raid card also can someone suggest a good raid card to run with vista?

THANKS!!

As long as they have identical model N.O, cache, size and rpm. part N.O shouldn't be a problem. I'm not too familiar with hitachi hard drives, but if it's seagate then you will need both the same model (eg 7200.10), cache size, rpm, and hard drive size. If you need a raid card any cheap one with silicon image chipset or via should be fine, since you are only doing simple mirroring.

RAID 1 is mirrored, for the record.

Okay, so is it really necessary to have the exact same drives? I really don't think RAID cares. I've rebuilt a RAID 1 array using a totally different hard-drive, different brand, different cache, though same RPM and size. In fact, I pretty certain that you can use different sized drives, and the array will just scale to the size of the smaller. Does anyone know if the identical drive thing is just a recommendation for better performance or a myth? 'Cause my experience seems to indicate that it doesn't matter.

Drives dont matter!

Two disks can be added to an array but the array will only utilised the speed/cache/size of the lower of the two disks.

For example... Raptor 150Gb at 10,000RPM at SATAI and a WD vanilla at 320Gb and 7200RPM on SATAII in a RAID-1 would become and array of 150Gb (the max 150gb on the raptor) therefore 170gb on the WD vanilla would be unused. The array would also only read/write as fast as the slower drive.

The same would occur for a RAID-0 although speed would be effect more.

Alright thanks for the info, I was just under the impression it had to be the same. Anyone know a good pci raid card I could pickup for vista?