What’s RAID?
RAID abbreviation is “Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Drives” is a term that is referred to “data storage” this is a system of different drives or hard disks where is distributed or duplicated the information. Perfect for your dedicated server, if you need more security, this can be one of the solutions to prevent the data losing.
The RAID is defined in “levels” depending off the configuration, the RAID benefits over a unique hard drive are the next; more integrity, best tolerance to failing, better throughput and more capacity.
The original uses, the mayor advantage was the ability of combine more HD with a low cost and older technology that offers better storage capacity, best reliability, more velocity or a combination of this advantages, this best that one new generation hard drive technology.
The simplest way of RAID is a combination of multiple disks in a unique logic drive. Instead a bunch of different hard disks, the Operating system only sees one.
Whit the option in mother boards for RAID solutions; this is also a solution for sophisticated personal computers, like computers for audio or video edition.
Like I said, RAID is managed in levels (or combination of different disks)
RAID 0 (Data Stripping)
This distributes data evenly between two or more disks without parity information or redundancy, this means, have no tolerance to fail (if fail occurs, the disk information will be lost and should be restored from a security copy)
RAID 1 (Data Mirroring)
This RAID creates exact copy (like a copy cat) of an amount of information in two or more disks (array). This is useful when the reading performance is more important that the writing function, similar about security, the RAID 0 doesn’t support failing in one of the disks, and RAID 1 does it, when store’s same information in every disk.
RAID 2
RAID 2 doesn’t duplicates information when is stored, like RAID 1, it uses the Hamming code for more confidence. Every byte is stored and distributed between the raid Disks.
RAID 3
This RAID uses level division in byte levels with a dedicated parity disk, this raid is used rarely in practice. A secondary effect is that normally this raid can’t attend many simultaneous requests, this is because definition says “any simple block of data it will be divided for all the members of the group”, this means that for reading or writing action it’s necessary to activate the amount of all disks.
RAID 4
This RAID uses level division in block levels with a dedicated parity disk, this is to similar to RAID 3 instead dividing in bytes, it’s divided in blocks. This allows that any member of the group works independent when we only need a unique block.
RAID 5
This RAID uses the data division at block level distributing parity information between all the disks that belongs to the group. RAID 5 becomes the most popular by the low cost and the redundancy. Usually, RAID 5 implements with hardware support for the parity calculates.
RAID 6
This expand the level at RAID 5 whit the addition of other parity block, this permits the division of data in block levels and share the 2 blocks of parity between all the group members.
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