Understanding RAID and required number of minimum disk in graphical format

Posted on in Categories Beyond nixCraft, Howto, Linux, UNIX, Windows server last updated November 6, 2006

I had noticed that many new admins and end user get confused with RAID concept. Many think that RAID 0 offers backup protection.

A few points:
a) Redundant array of independent disks (RAID) refers to a data storage scheme using multiple hard drives to share or replicate data among the drives.

b) No matter which RAID array you use backup regularly.

c) For performance always use hardware based RAID controller. If you are tight on budget go for software based RAID. For any production environment I recommend hardware based RAID controller.

c) To make your decision final regarding RAID consider following points:
Your requirements

  • Fault tolerant
  • Speed vs performance vs overhead
  • Your application and required bandwidth
  • Final Cost


(click to enlarge image)

To make your life easy there is a tutorial available online. This tutorial offers:
=> Characteristics of each RAID array
=> Advantages and disadvantages of each RAID array
=> Required number of hard disk for each array
=> Suggested application of each RAID array

See RAID tutorial [acnc.com]

Posted by: Vivek Gite

The author is the creator of nixCraft and a seasoned sysadmin, DevOps engineer, and a trainer for the Linux operating system/Unix shell scripting. Get the latest tutorials on SysAdmin, Linux/Unix and open source topics via RSS/XML feed or weekly email newsletter.

Share this on (or read 3 comments/add one below):

3 comment

  3. The tutorial does not describe RAID10 fully, in particular Linux RAID10 is not described. Linux RAID10 only requires 2 drives, and it can perform like RAID0 for reading (in the far layout) and IMHO it is not expensive. It scales well, and can employ even and odd numbers of drives

    Have a question? Post it on our forum!