A couple of our servers have ST32000641AS (2TB Seagate desktop drives) in RAID 10 using an Adaptec 2405 controller. I've been told by Adaptec that this is a bad idea and we have, in fact, already seen one raid system go down using these drives. Since this is a 24/7 system, my question is whether it would be possible to switch over to WD RE4 2TB raid edition drives (model WD2003FYYS) by hot swapping them, one by one until we've migrated over. We would wait between each drive to make sure the raid has rebuilt itself.
In theory, this should work... however, one thing I can't figure out is whether these drives are the exact same size or not. Unfortunately, the raid build on the ST32000641AS drives are partitioned to capacity. If the WD2003FYYS drives are even the slightest bit smaller, it's not going to work. Any ideas on where I can go to learn whether the WD2003FYYS drive is exactly as big (or bigger) than then ST32000641AS?
Yes, I realize that both drives advertise themselves as 2TB drives...
The manual for ST32000641AS (alternative link) says that the drive has 3,907,029,168 guaranteed sectors, while the specifications for WD2003FYYS (alternative link) say it has 3,907,029,168 sectors. Therefore the drives have the same capacity.