What is RAID?

A redundant array of independent disks, or RAID, is a way of storing the same data in
different places (where the term redundant comes from) on multiple hard disks.
There are many ways to use RAID and there are several different types of array. Some use
multiple disks to increase performance think a two or three lane road instead of single, that
has to serve traffic going in two directions while others are used to increase reliability.
Additionally, there is a third type of RAID that offer the best of both worlds; all of which
weve explained below.
A RAID array appears to the operating system to be a single logical drive, regardless of how
many individual drives are part of the RAID array. Both hard disks and SSDs can be used,
and while its advised that matching drives are used in a single array for best performance,
its not strictly required.

What kinds of RAID are there?

I know of 9 different kinds of RAID plus a performance RAID that has no redundancy built
into it, however on everything outside of the high-end server environment youll only be
offered the four main versions: RAID 0, 1, 0+1 and 5. These RAID configurations can and
are used independently or in different combinations. Below are the different kinds of a RAID
that are used today.

RAID-0: This technique has striping but no redundancy of data. It offers the
best performance as data is read/written to both drives simultaneously, but no
fault-tolerance so if one drive fails you lose both drives data. Drives are
typically added in multiples of two.

RAID-1: This type is also known as disk mirroring and consists of at least two drives that
duplicate the storage of data. There is no striping. Read performance is improved since either
disk can be read at the same time, meaning if one disk is busy the other is accessed. Write
performance is the same as for single disk storage. RAID-1 provides the best performance
and the best fault-tolerance in a multi-user system, although for a single user its unlikely to
see as much benefit. Again drives are typically added in multiples of two.

RAID-5: This type includes a rotating parity array, thus addressing the write limitation in
RAID-4. That means all read and write operations can be overlapped. RAID-5 stores parity
information but not redundant data (but parity information can be used to reconstruct data if a
single drive fails). RAID-5 requires at least three and usually five disks for the array. Its best
for systems in which performance is not so critical or which do few write operations.