4/3/2017 RAID Types (Levels) Reference

RAID Calculator

RAID Levels

There are many different ways to organize data in a RAID array. These ways are called "RAID levels". Different RAID levels have different speed and fault tole
tolerant. Levels 1, 5, 6, and 1+0 are fault tolerant to a different degree ‐ should one of the hard drives in the array fail, the data is sĕll reconstructed on the fly

RAID levels 2, 3, and 4 are theoreĕcally defined but not used in pracĕce.

There are some more complex layouts: RAID 5E/5EE (integraĕng some spare space), RAID 50 and 60 (a combinaĕon of RAID 5 or 6 with RAID 0), and RAID DP
this reference.

RAID levels comparison chart

RAID 0

Min number of disks 2

Fault tolerance None

Disk space overhead None

Read speed Fast

Write speed Fast

Hardware cost Cheap

Striping and blocks

Striping is a technique to store data on the disk array. The conĕgous stream of data is divided into blocks, and blocks are wriĥen to mulĕple disks in a speci

Block size is selected when the array is created. Typically, blocks are from 32KB to 128KB in size.

RAID Level 0 (Stripe set)

Use RAID0 when you need performance but the data is not important.

In a RAID0, the data is divided into blocks, and blocks are wriĥen to disks in turn.

RAID0 provides the most speed improvement, especially for write speed, because read and write requests are evenly distributed across all the disks in the ar
the same improvement with reads but not writes. So if the request comes for, say, blocks 1, 2, and 3, each block is read from its own disk. Thus, the data is re
disk.

However, RAID0 provides no fault tolerance at all. Should any of the disks in the array fail, the enĕre array fails and all the data is lost.

RAID0 soluĕons are cheap, and RAID0 uses all the disk capacity.

If RAID0 controller fails, you can do a RAID0 recovery relaĕvely easy using RAID recovery so├ware. However you should keep in mind that if the disk failure h

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RAID Level 1 (Mirror)

Use mirroring when you need reliable storage of relaĕvely small capacity.

Mirroring (RAID1) stores two idenĕcal copies of data on two hard drives. Should one of the drives fail, all the data can be read from the other drive. Mirrorin

Read speed can be improved in certain implementaĕons, because read requests are sent to two drives in turn. Similar to RAID0, this should increase speed b
implementaĕons take advantage of this technique.

Write speed on RAID1 is the same as the write speed of a single disk, because all the copies of the data must be updated.

RAID1 uses the capacity of one of its drives to maintain fault tolearnce. This amounts to 50% capacity loss for the array. E.g. if you combine two 500GB drives
disk space.

If RAID1 controller fails you do not need to recover neither array configuraĕon nor data from it. To get data you should just connect any of the drives to the k

RAID Level 5 (Stripe with parity)

RAID5 fits as large, reliable, relaĕvely cheap storage.

RAID5 writes data blocks evenly to all the disks, in a paĥern similar to RAID0. However, one addiĕonal "parity" block is wriĥen in each row. This addiĕonal pa
the row, provides redundancy. If one of the drives fails and thus one block in the row is unreadable, the contents of this block can be reconstructed using
data blocks.

If all drives are OK, read requests are distributed evenly across drives, providing read speed similar to that of RAID0. For N disks in the array, RAID0 provides
(N‐1) ĕmes faster reads. If one of the drives has failed, the read speed degrades to that of a single drive, because all blocks in a row are required to serve the

Write speed of a RAID5 is limited by the parity updates. For each wriĥen block, its corresponding parity block has to be read, updated, and then wriĥen back
improvement on RAID5, if any at all.

The capacity of one member drive is used to maintain fault tolerance. E.g. if you have 10 drives 1TB each, the resulĕng RAID5 capacity would be 9TB.

If RAID5 controller fails, you can sĕll recover data from the array with RAID 5 recovery so├ware. Unlike RAID0, RAID5 is redundant and it can survive one mem

While the diagram on the right might seem simple enough, there is a variety of different layouts in pracĕcal use. Le├/right and synchronous/asynchronous p
here for diagrams). Further complicaĕng the issue, certain controllers implement delayed parity.

RAID Level 6 (Stripe with dual parity)

RAID6 is a large, highly reliable, relaĕvely expensive storage.

RAID6 uses a block paĥern similar to RAID5, but uĕlizes two different parity funcĕons to derive two different parity blocks per row. If one of the drives fails,
set of parity data. If another drive fails before the array is recovered, the contents of the two missing drives are reconstructed by combining the remaining da

Read speed of the N‐disk RAID6 is (N‐2) ĕmes faster than the speed of a single drive, similar to RAID levels 0 and 5. If one or two drives fail in RAID6, the read
reconstrucĕon of missing blocks requires an enĕre row to be read.

There is no significant write speed improvement in RAID6 layout. RAID6 parity updates require even more processing than that in RAID5.

The capacity of two member drives is used to maintain fault tolerance. For an array of 10 drives 1TB each, the resulĕng RAID6 capacity would be 8TB.

The recovery of a RAID6 from a controller failure is fairly complicated. The main approaches to RAID6 data recovery in parĕcular and data recovery in genera

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RAID Level 10 (Mirror over stripes)

RAID10 is a large, fast, reliable, but expensive storage.

RAID10 uses two idenĕcal RAID0 arrays to hold two idenĕcal copies of the content.

Read speed of the N‐drive RAID10 array is N ĕmes faster than that of a single drive. Each drive can read its block of data independently, same as in RAID0 of

Writes are two ĕmes slower than reads, because both copies have to be updated. As far as writes are concerned, RAID10 of N disks is the same as RAID0 of N

Half the array capacity is used to maintain fault tolerance. In RAID10, the overhead increases with the number of disks, contrary to RAID levels 5 and 6, wher
number of disks. This makes RAID10 the most expensive RAID type when scaled to large capacity.

If there is a controller failure in a RAID10, any subset of the drives forming a complete RAID0 can be recovered in the same way the RAID0 is recovered.

Similarly to RAID 5, several variaĕons of the layout are possible in implementaĕon. For more diagrams, refer here.

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Rkarbowski11.03 02:52
If you have a unit with mulĕple shelves (12 each) with RAID 6 is there a limit on disk number and capacity? I.E. 16 disks at 2 TB each? If I add disks to the rema
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