One of the drives failed in my server configured with RAID 5, and I can't find a exact replacement. From my understanding, RAID 5 supports drives with different sizes. Is this safe? Any recommendations, like choosing the same manufacturer or something like that?
RAID 5 in my server is provided by a LSI controller.
Best Answer
I would always try to stay as similar as possible, so I suggest you to buy from the same manufacturer and hard drive family if possible. Just buy a bigger one.
If not possible, then sure another manufacturer would do it, as long as the disc is exact the same size or bigger, never smaller! Be careful, just being one sector smaller than your old discs will make it not work if your RAID uses the full old disc size. That's why it's recommended while creating a RAID array not to use the whole disc size, but leave some percentage unused, then it's simpler to use different disc with "same" size which have not exact equal sector count.
I have myself some mixed RAID6, Seagate and Hitachi, no problems. But it's not a LSI controller, it's an Areca one.