What is RAID? RAID 0, 1, 5, & 10 Made Easy - The Plug - HelloTech (2024)

If you’ve been trying to set up your own computer or scaling up your hard drives, then you might have heard about RAID arrays. But what is RAID? A RAID array is made up of at least two hard drives programmed to work as one bigger and more powerful hard drive. Here’s everything you need to know about what RAID is, what it does, and which common array you should choose from RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10.

What Is RAID and What Does it Mean?

RAID is an acronym for “redundant array of independent drives (or disks).” Basically, RAID lets you take several hard drives and group them as one unit. This can help you store backups of your data in case a drive fails, or improve the speed and efficiency of your drives, or both.

There are many types of RAID configurations, but the most commonly used are RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10.

What Is RAID 0?

What is RAID? RAID 0, 1, 5, & 10 Made Easy - The Plug - HelloTech (1)

Also called “disk striping,” RAID 0 is all about optimizing the speed of your hard drives. If you have at least two drives, using RAID 0 will combine them and write data on both of them simultaneously or sequentially, depending on your system. This will help with read and write speeds. However, if one drive fails, you will lose all of your data.

When you save a file, RAID 0 breaks the data into segments called striped units. Then it spreads that data across all of the drives in your array. This is called striping, and it helps you access data faster because you have multiple drives working together to read, write, and store data.

Using RAID 0 is faster than getting a large hard drive with the same capacity because you would only have one hard drive processing data instead of multiple drives in an array.

However, RAID 0 does not include any redundancy (or backups). That means if one of your drives fails, you lose all the data on that drive. And, since your data is stored and processed across multiple drives, losing the data on one drive means you lose all of the data on all of your drives. Plus, since you are using multiple disks, the chance that one of them will fail is increased.

RAID 0 is best used for storing temporary files or files that you have backed up elsewhere.

What is RAID 1?

What is RAID? RAID 0, 1, 5, & 10 Made Easy - The Plug - HelloTech (2)

Otherwise known as “disk mirroring,” RAID 1 is all about backing up data (also known as redundancy). If you have at least two drives, using RAID 1 will duplicate your data and store a copy on each drive. This is called mirroring, and it ensures you won’t lose your files if a drive fails.

Using RAID 1 means that if one drive fails, you’ll still have a copy of all your data on the other drive. Then, you can replace the failed drive with a new one, even while the computer is still running. It will automatically create a new mirror image of all your data on the good drive. This capability in RAID arrays is called hot-swappable.

However, using RAID 1 means that you will only get half the storage capacity that you would get otherwise. This is because every time you save a file to one drive, you save a copy to a second drive.

RAID 1 is best used for storing data that you don’t want to lose, such as crucial banking data or family photos and documents.

What is RAID 5?

Also known as “disk striping with parity,” RAID 5 is about speed and redundancy. If you have at least three hard drives, using RAID 5 will break your data into segments and save those segments across your drives.

Now, when you write data in this array, just like in RAID 0, your data is broken down into units and spread over the hard drives in your array. But, aside from striping the data, it also stores parity bits on the drives. A parity bit is an additional binary digit that helps your array check if there’s any error or missing segments. These bits of data can also serve as redundancies.

Just like with Disk Mirroring, the drives in this array are also hot-swappable. So if one drive fails, you can easily replace it with a new one, and the array will automatically recreate your RAID configuration.

However, RAID 5 will not offer you the same speed as RAID 1 or the same capacity as RAID 0. It will take processing power to create the parity bits, and some storage space will be set aside for the redundancies. So, if you have three hard drives with 500GB of storage each, you will only get 1TB worth of capacity because one-third of the space will be allocated for redundancies.

This setup is best for storing critical data and running applications that need decent speed and efficiency.

What is RAID 10?

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Classified as a “hybrid RAID configuration,” RAID 10 is actually a combination of RAID 1+0. This means you get the speed of disk striping and the redundancies of disk mirroring. For techies, this is also called a “stripe of mirrors.”

If you have at least four drives, RAID 10 will increase the speed that you would have with just one drive, and you get the advantages of having redundancies. However, this also means that you have to buy more drives, and you only get half the capacity of all of them.

RAID 10 is best for running applications or hosting servers that need to be up 24/7. If one or two of your drives fail, you still have the mirror drive with all your data intact in them.

If you’re looking to set up a RAID array, but you don’t know if you want to go with traditional hard drives or solid-state drives, check out our article on the difference between HDD and SSD.

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What is RAID? RAID 0, 1, 5, & 10 Made Easy - The Plug - HelloTech (2024)

FAQs

What is RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10? ›

The most common types are RAID 0 (striping), RAID 1 (mirroring) and its variants, RAID 5 (distributed parity), and RAID 6 (dual parity). Multiple RAID levels can also be combined or nested, for instance RAID 10 (striping of mirrors) or RAID 01 (mirroring stripe sets).

Should I use RAID 5 or 10? ›

RAID 5 offers better storage efficiency as it requires only one drive for parity information, allowing for a higher usable storage capacity. In contrast, RAID 10 requires mirroring, reducing the overall usable capacity. Typically, in RAID 10, only half of the total drive capacity is available for data storage.

What is RAID 0 best used for? ›

RAID 0 is best for storage that is noncritical but requires high-speed reads and writes. Caching live streaming video and video editing are common uses for RAID 0 due to speed and performance.

What's the difference between RAID 0 and raid 1? ›

RAID 0 excels in speed through striping but is at the risk of data loss in the event of a single drive failure. On the other hand, RAID 1 prioritizes data redundancy through mirroring, ensuring data integrity even if a drive fails, but with reduced usable disk capacity.

What is the main downside to using RAID? ›

The main disadvantage of RAID is that it does not give any warning of when drive failure is likely to occur. You can rebuild an array, but the rebuild process takes a long time for large arrays and often a second drive fails, or part of a drive cannot be read.

What is the best RAID setting? ›

The best RAID configuration for your storage system will depend on whether you value speed, data redundancy or both. If you value speed most of all, choose RAID 0. If you value data redundancy most of all, remember that the following drive configurations are fault-tolerant: RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6 and RAID 10.

Why should RAID 5 no longer be used? ›

Longer rebuild times are one of the major drawbacks of RAID 5, and this delay could result in data loss. Because of its complexity, RAID 5 rebuilds can take a day or longer, depending on controller speed and workload. If another disk fails during the rebuild, then users lose data forever.

When should you use RAID 10? ›

RAID 10 can protect against single drive (or drive set) failures, but a secure data backup plan should also be in place. The faster rebuild times and features like hot swapping disks make RAID 10 an appealing option.

Which is better RAID 0 or 5? ›

RAID 0 offers the best performance and capacity, but the worst reliability and security. RAID 1 offers the best reliability and security, but the worst performance and capacity. RAID 5 offers a compromise between performance and reliability, but requires more disks and computational overhead.

What is RAID 1 best for? ›

RAID 1 (disk mirroring) is a good choice for applications that require high availability and good read performance, such as transactional applications, email servers and operating systems. However, it can also be expensive and potentially impact write performance.

Does anyone use RAID 0? ›

If you're a hardcore gamer, you might use RAID 0 to decrease load times and maximize performance. A videographer that deals with multiple gigabytes of video would use RAID 0 to improve processing speed. Companies with massive data archives could employ RAID 0 for faster read/write times.

How risky is RAID 0? ›

RAID 0 is geared toward the use of HDD hard disks more so than other RAID levels. A decisive disadvantage compared to a single storage medium is the higher risk of failure. Each hard disk in the network can fail on account of hardware or software problems, thereby causing the entire system to fail.

Why is RAID 10 better than 01? ›

RAID 10 and RAID 01 provide identical capacities and performance, and both architectures have the same amount of storage overhead, prioritizing redundancy over capacity. The difference is that RAID 10 provides better fault tolerance in most cases because it is not limited to two groups.

Can I change RAID 0 to 1? ›

It's not possible to migrate from a RAID 0 array to a RAID 1 array directly. You will need to backup data, remove the original RAID 0 array and re-create a RAID 1 array with the disks.

Is RAID 1 or 10 better? ›

RAID 10 generally performs better for both read and write operations compared to RAID 1. RAID 1 read performance is decent since data can be read from either mirrored drive, but write performance is limited to the slower of the two drives.

What is the RAID 10? ›

RAID 10, also known as RAID 1+0, is a RAID configuration that combines disk mirroring and disk striping to protect data. It requires a minimum of four disks and stripes data across mirrored pairs. As long as one disk in each mirrored pair is functional, data can be retrieved.

Is RAID 1 or 5 better? ›

Storage Capacity: RAID 5 has an advantage in terms of storage capacity utilization. It offers more usable storage space compared to RAID 1 since it uses parity information instead of mirroring. Write Performance: RAID 1 typically outperforms RAID 5 in terms of write performance.

What does RAID 1 stand for? ›

(Redundant Array of Independent Disks Mode 1) A popular disk or solid state drive (SSD) subsystem that increases safety by writing the same data on two drives. Called "mirroring," RAID 1 does not increase performance. However, if one drive fails, the second drive is used, and the failed drive is manually replaced.

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