Redundant Array of Independent Disks or RAID would be a very good way to backup your data. But the data in a RAID array is not a copy of your data. It is the data that you are actively retrieving or storing. And because of that, you have to keep in mind that RAID is not a method of backup. It’s simply a way to maintain uptime and availability if one of those drives happens to fail.
Let’s step through each one of these RAID levels to see how they might be used:
RAID 0 provides data striping across multiple disks to increase performance.
RAID 1 provides redundancy by mirroring the data identically on two hard disks.
RAID 10 creates a striped RAID of two mirrored RAIDs (combines RAID 1 & RAID 0).
RAID 5 provides redundancy by striping data and parity data across the disk drives.
RAID 6 provides redundancy by striping and double parity data across the disk drives.
Ok, now, we know what exactly each type is. Let’s summarize a generale characteristics and see how to use specific RAID arrays.
| Minimal number of disks | Redundancy | Technology | Usage | |
| RAID 0 | 2 | No | Striping | Increased performance |
| RAID 1 | 2 | Yes | Mirroring | Fault-resistant, Fault-tolerant |
| RAID 5 | 3 | Yes | Striping + Parity | Fault-resistant, Fault-tolerant |
| RAID 6 | 4 | Yes | Striping + Double parity | Fault-tolerant |
| RAID 10 | 4 | Yes | Striping + Mirroring | Disaster-tolerant |
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