Standard Technology – What is RAID?

RAID is an acronym of “Redundant Array of Independent Disks”. The idea is to combine standard drives into an array which performs better than a single disk and at the same time your computer sees it as a standalone drive. This technology can be used in different ways to achieve different results called RAID Levels/Modes.

Why would you need RAID?

• For Speed and Capacity
• If you need Maximum Redundancy
• If you require an increase in capacity with simple redundancy
• For a perfect combination of speed and security

RAID Levels/Modes

JBOD

The controller treats each drive as a stand-alone disk, therefore each drive is an independent logical drive with its own drive letter. Standard Mode does not provide data redundancy. It is not a RAID in the sense of the meaning. Nevertheless it is among the RAID levels because the RAID controller manages it.

RAID 0

RAID 0 or striping mode is used to achieve higher storage capacities with maximum speed. The data is split among several disks that are written at the same time. So for example 2 drives of 250GB capacity in RAID 0 are faster than a single 500GB drive.

RAID 1

RAID 1 or mirroring mode is used to make an exact copy of data on each disk in the array. In this mode the capacity is half the capacity of all the hard drives within the array.

RAID 5

RAID 5 or parity mode distributes data across multiple disks making the system fail proof. In this configuration the total capacity of the system is (N-1)*GB where “N” is the number of disks you have in the array, so for example four disks of 250GB capacity provides 750GB of total usable storage. In some more advanced systems is it possible to combine different RAID modes together.

RAID 10

Best used for speed and redundancy. It is a combination of Mode 0 and Mode 1 and gives the read/write speed of RAID 0 and the redundancy of RAID 1.

RAID 50, 51, 60 & 61

Combined RAID mode, available on TeraStation® 6 and 8 bays.