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What is RAID? RAID technology
is formally called a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID).
It was invented at the University
of California at Berkeley by a group of researchers. An alternative name for
RAID is Redundant Array of Independent Disks. What RAID Does Conceptually, what RAID does is to string together a bunch of hard disks in PCs and make them work together. Now, the final group of disks can give you better reliability and speed depending on which RAID setup you choose. If you check around, you will find that there are
up to 6 levels of RAID setup. These range from RAID Level 0 (write data to
multiple disks for increase performance) to RAID Level 5 (write data for both
performance and failure protection). RAID Level 0 In RAID Level 0, the RAID host adapter sends one
part of data to one hard disk and another part of the data to another hard disk.
The advantage is that you get better capacity and performance. There is,
however, no error correction. Use RAID 0 is in cases where you want faster
performance, but not much emphasis on reliability of data. RAID Level 1 RAID Level 1 is the other side of the coin
compare to RAID Level 0. When your PC sends data to be written to the hard disk,
the RAID adapter writes an identical image to each of two drives. If one drive
fails, the other still has the complete data. This clearly sacrifices
performance for data reliability. RAID Level 2, Level 3, and Level 4
Now on to the other RAID levels. What RAID 2 is to add an error correction code
to the written data so that if a disk fails, the data can be recovered. RAID 3
and RAID 4 are very similar to RAID 2, but they use different error correction
codes and approaches. RAID Level 5 Now RAID Level 5 is the ultimate. It includes
both error correction and performance in its setup, so it is good for corporate
or mission critical use. It gives the best of both worlds, fast performance and
data reliability. Conclusion RAID technology can be difficult to understand, especially for the beginner. Do go through the above tips to understand it so that you can make better purchase decisions when building your next computer system. Related Articles You may also wish to read the following related articles:
What causes a hard disk drive to fail © 2007 Build-Your-Own-Computers.com
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