RAID means Redundant Array of Independent Disks.

RAID is a technique where a data is distributed over multiple hard disks (called array of disks) to protect the data from hard disk failure or improve the performance of the hard disk. The data security is possible because in RAID technology even if one hard disk fails, the system can recover the data from the other hard disks. However, to an operating system, these multiple hard disks appear as a single logic unit.

RAID technology is based on three key concepts, mirroring, striping and error correction.

Mirroring refers to copying of data to multiple hard disks. Striping refers to splitting of data across multiple hard disks. Errors correction refers to detecting hard disk failures and recovering from the failures.Error detection is done by parity checking (in the same way as done in RAM).

RAID RAID RAID RAID 1)

0 1 5 10 (RAID 0 + RAID

The term mirroring refers to the storage of two copies of the same data located on separate hard drives within an array, or within different arrays. While inputting the data, the system writes the information simultaneously to both locations. A major part of RAID technologys redundancy advantages, mirroring allows continued operation of the system in the event of one drive or array failing. Mirroring offers a distinct advantage to data safety concerns, especially in environments where availability is critical.

This is a method of combining multiple drives into one logical storage unit. Striping partitions the storage space of each drive into stripes, which can be as small as one sector (512 bytes) or as large as several megabytes. These stripes are then interleaved in a rotating sequence, so that the combined space is composed alternately of stripes from each drive. To maximize throughput for the disk subsystem, the I/O load must be balanced across all the drives so that each drive can be kept busy as much as possible..

RAID level 0 does not provide fault tolerance. This level is also known as disk striping, because it uses a disk file system called a stripe set. Data is divided into blocks and is spread in a fixed order among all the disks in the array. RAID level 0 improves read and write performance by spreading operations across multiple disks, so that operations can be performed independently.

RAID level 1 provides fault tolerance. This level is also known as disk mirroring because it uses a disk file system called a mirror set. Disk mirroring provides a redundant, identical copy of a selected disk. All data written to the primary disk is written to the mirror disk. It also generally improves read performance (but may degrade write performance).

RAID level 5 is known as striping with parity. This is the most popular RAID level. It is similar to level 4 in that it stripes the data in large blocks across all the disks in the array. It differs in that it writes the parity across all the disks. The data redundancy is provided by the parity information. The data and parity information are arranged on the disk array so that the two are always on different disks. RAID level 5 has better performance than RAID level 1 and provides fault tolerance.

RAID level 10 is known as mirroring with striping. This level uses a striped array of disks, which are then mirrored to another identical set of striped disks. RAID level 10 provides the performance benefits of disk striping (level 0) with the disk redundancy of mirroring (level 1). RAID 10 provides the highest read/write performance of any of the Hybrid RAID levels, but uses twice as many disks.

 Read

access can be overlapped

Because data is spread over different drives

Write

operations could also be overlapped

Because different data records store the parity information in different disks

 Most fault tolerance features are centered on a server

A number of fault tolerant features address the possible failure of hard disks

Disk storage in the server is the focal point of a number of fault tolerant features Mechanical components are more susceptible to failure than electronic components The hard disk is most vulnerable to failure in a server

By Baby Imran