Replace a 3.5" hard drive in a RAID 5 array with an SSD?

Question

With a 3ware 9650SE on Debian 6, can I replace a drive in a RAID 5 array with an SSD? The goal would be to eventually replace each 3.5" hard drive in the array with SSDs. Is there anything I should know about attempting something like this? Any background info?

Answer 1

The drive has to be of equal or larger capacity than the drive it's replacing, which is still difficult (read: expensive) to do, depending on the age of the array.

Things you need to know:

• You won't get much of a speed increase until all the drives are replaced
• The 9650SE isn't SSD aware, meaning that you lose TRIM functionality. This can lead to a decreased lifetime of the drive.
• I don't know what the throughput of the 9650SE is, but it's entirely possible that the RAID card could be a bottleneck once you get all of your drives installed