I want to buy some cheaper HDs for our server (it will have practically zero HD access) but I plan to put them into a RAID 1 config, just for peace of mind. Our server is a second-hand PowerEdge 860, with a SAS 5i/R controller on it.
The existing drives (which came with the server) are Barracuda 7200.9's which are "SATA II" (i.e they've got 3Gb/s speeds and NCQ). That would answer my question except that Seagate made them to be 100% backwards compatible, too.
I'm concerned that newer, bigger disks, that may not be 1.5Gb/s backwards compatible, will not work with the SAS 5i/R controller.
Does anyone know for sure?
Best Answer
Speed negotiation is part of the SATA initialization protocol. Any controller worth it's weight properly implements this. Some early VIA and SiS chipsets were known to fail at this, but I would expect better from the SAS 5i/R (LSI, I believe?)