[Guide] How to Choose the Best RAID Level for New Disk Array

Summary: Also, always keep a backup of your data stored in your RAID drive to prevent permanent data loss. Please be aware; RAID is not a backup or alternative to backup. The purpose of RAID is to achieve high read/write performance for intensive tasks and maintain data availability in case of a drive failure. In case of loss of data use Stellar Data Recovery Technician software to get back your lost or deleted data.

Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) is an advanced data storage virtualization technology, which is widely used by gamers, developers, video editors, professionals, and businesses around the world. That’s because RAID offers many advantages—such as data redundancy, higher read/write speeds, or both—over the traditional hard drive storage.

One can choose from different RAID levels starting with RAID 0 to RAID 10, which is a nested RAID arrangement of RAID 1 and RAID 0. Similarly, one can also create RAID 50, RAID 60, or RAID 100 as per their data storage requirements. However, nested RAID levels are expensive, and most users can’t afford it.

Which One Should You Choose and Why?

To help you decide which RAID level is right for your data storage needs and, most importantly, budget, we have detailed everything about various RAID levels—from RAID 0 to RAID 60—and mentioned their advantages, drawbacks, and applications.

RAID Levels—A Detailed Comparison

Below is a detailed comparison of standard RAID levels such as RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6 and nested RAID levels—RAID 10, RAID 50, RAID 60. A comparison chart is also attached at the end of the post, comparing various RAID levels on parameters such as minimum drives requirement, read/write performance, storage availability, redundancy, and application.

Important Tip: RAID array is not a backup solution. Never depend completely on a RAID level for your data. Always keep a regular backup copy of your data on an external drive or cloud storage as RAID arrays are highly susceptible to failure, corruption, and damage due to various logical errors caused by virus or malware infection, power failure or surge, bad sectors on RAID drives, SMART errors, etc.

RAID 0

If you are into gaming and video editing, RAID 0 is the right configuration for your data storage needs. RAID 0 is a standard RAID configuration, which uses data striping in RAID to store data on the disk array. It’s the most affordable RAID configuration that requires at least two disks.

Demanding tasks such as gaming and video editing requires frequent data transfer, often in large volumes. RAID 0 increases the read and writes performance of your system by up to 2X than the normal hard drive and spreads the load across drives.

Figure 1: RAID 0 Illustration- Striping Storage method is used for data storage

Pros

Cons

Applications

Recovery Management

RAID 1

RAID 1 uses mirroring method to for data storage and requires at least two drives. It’s the most basic RAID level that provides redundancy, i.e., protection against data loss due to disk failure. The data copied to RAID 1 is stored in both drives as individual copies. Thus, if one disk fails, you will be able to recover data from another drive.

Figure 2: RAID 1 Illustration- Mirroring Storage method is used for data storage

Due to mirroring, RAID 1 storage is halved, i.e., you can use 50% of total disk volume with normal read/write speeds. However, unlike RAID 0, RAID 1 can withstand up to 1 disk failure in each array without causing data loss.

Pros

Cons

Applications

Recovery Management

RAID 5

RAID 5 is expensive and often used by professionals and businesses. Unlike RAID 0 and RAID 1, RAID 5 requires a dedicated hardware controller with minimum 3 storage drives and supports maximum 16 disks. It uses striping and parity bit data storage method to store your files across the disk array.

It provides high read and write speeds along with redundancy due to parity bits. Parity bits are the checksum of all data stored in all drives of RAID 5 array.

A user can utilize up to 94% of the total combined disk volume.

The parity bit helps restore data lost due to failure of up to 1 disk in the array.

Figure 3: RAID 5- Mirroring With Parity Across Drives

Pros

Cons

Applications

Recovery Management

RAID 6

RAID 6 is a better version of RAID 5 and is often referred as ‘RAID 5 on Steroids’. RAID 6 overcomes a major issue in the RAID 5, which is the inability to survive more than 1 disk failure. RAID 6 can withstand up to 2-disk failure without data loss.

RAID 6 also uses striping and parity bits to store data. However, unlike RAID 5, RAID 6 stores parity bits in two disks and thus requires minimum 4 disk in the array. And thus, offers balanced read/write speeds with better redundancy.

Due to two parity bits, RAID 6 allows you to utilize up to 88% of the combined disk storage volume.

Figure 4: RAID 6- Mirroring with DUAL-Parity across drives

Pros

Cons

Applications

Recovery Management

RAID 10

RAID 10 is the nested RAID configuration made from a combination of RAID 1 and RAID 0. It’s a mirrored RAID 0 level. It uses both data striping and data mirroring storage methods in a nested environment. Thus, it offers both higher read/write speeds and better data redundancy than RAID 5 and RAID 6.

It requires at least 4 disks, but the total storage is halved due to mirroring. So if you are going to use 4 1TB drives, you will essentially get 2TB usable storage. It can withstand up to 2 disk failure—one from either side. However, if two disks from one side fail, data will be lost and can’t be recovered.

Figure 5: RAID 10- Combination of RAID 1 (Mirroring) and RAID 0 (Striping) array

Pros

Cons

Applications

Recovery Management

RAID 50 & RAID 60

RAID 50 and RAID 60 are also nested RAID configurations of ‘RAID 5+RAID 0’ and ‘RAID 6+RAID 0’. Thus, it offers features of both RAID 5 and 6 along with RAID 0’s high read/write speed performance.

RAID 50 requires minimum 6 and supports maximum 48 disks in single or multiple mirrored arrays of RAID 5.

Similarly, RAID 60 requires at least 8 disk drives configured as two mirrored RAID 6 arrays

These RAID configurations are used for storing large databases, archives, backups, and as application servers. These RAID configurations offer high availability and can withstand up to 1 drive failure in each sub-array.

Figure 6: RAID Level comparison chart

You might be wondering where are RAID 2, RAID 3 and RAID 4. Well, they are not used anymore. And out of all RAID arrays, RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5 and RAID 6 are the most popular RAID levels used by various users ranging from a home user to a professional and businesses.

Conclusion

While choosing a RAID level, consider your needs—do you want performance, redundancy, or both. RAID 0 and 1 are suitable for home and some power users. They are easy to set up and does not always require a hardware controller.

While RAID 5, RAID 6, and RAID 10 or beyond are suitable for SMBs as they offer both—better read/write performance and redundancy. However, choosing between these RAID levels will entirely depend on your budget and if you want more performance or better redundancy.

Further, remember that relying completely on RAID can be fatal for your data. Use a RAID recovery software such as Stellar Data Recovery Technician to rebuild and recover data from a broken, damaged, corrupt, and failed RAID 0, 5 and 6 arrays in just a few clicks.

To prevent RAID from failing, use Drive Monitor, a utility that comes with Stellar Data Recovery Technician, to keep a check on RAID drive’s health status and replace the impending drive before it leads to RAID failure.

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