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Redundant Array of
Independent Disks (RAID)
RAID is an IT term banded around
with few people truly knowing what it mean. If every you need the full RAID
specification it's a manual about 90 pages long. The table below is a
summary of those 90 pages.
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RAID 0 |
RAID 0 improves read and write performance, it
has no redundancy (ie if a disk fails then the data is gone). It is
“striped,” data is divided into blocks which spanning multiple disks.
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RAID 1 |
RAID 1 writes the data twice which provides high
fault tolerance. It uses fully redundant disk mirroring which means
that a complete copy of one drive is maintained on another drive (ie
the C drive is copied to the D drive, if C dies then the data is still
on D). |
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RAID 5 |
RAID 5 adds parity to the data striping seen in
RAID0. This means if one of the disks in a RAID 5 set fails, the
logical disk continues to function. Once a replacement disk is fitted
the parity information is used to recreate data on the replacement.
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RAID 10 |
RAID 10 combines RAID 1 and RAID 0. It is a
striped and fully mirrored set of disks. It is the best config giving
both redundancy and improved performance, but costs an arm and a leg. |
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