From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: PFC Subject: Re: block level vs. file level Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 09:48:49 +0100 Message-ID: References: <43EF8CFB.5080403@kfa.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; delsp=yes; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <43EF8CFB.5080403@kfa.org> Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: it , linux-raid@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-raid.ids > This also raises another point, which is relevant for both cases - same > exact models of hard disks have different number of cylinders, so if a > RAID partition is created on a larger drive it cannot be mirrored to a > smaller drive. I have a RAID5 with 5 250G drives, but some are 251 GiB (maxtors), some are 250.059 GiB (seagate)... say, if I started with 5 Seagates, I could later replace one of them with a Maxtor, but not the other way around, as the Seagate are just a tiny bit smaller. cfdisk says : sdb1 250994,42 sdc1 250056,74 I suggest, when using software raid, to create partitions that are, say, 100 megabytes or even a gigabyte smaller than the size of the drive. You lose a bit of space, but if you ever need to change one, you won't feel stupid with a brand new drive that you can't use because it's a few sectors too short.