OWC Mercury Rack Pro User Manual & Owners Manual page 7

OWC Mercury Rack Pro
RAID 1 "Drive Mirroring" Mode (2 drives installed only)
Switch setting: UP-UP-DOWN
The drives show up as one volume, but only 50% of the total capacity can be used. It is
highly recommended to use identical drives for this RAID method. However, while you
can utilize drives of different capacity, the RAID size will be based on the smallest ca-
pacity total of the drives used in the RAID set. RAID 1 creates an exact copy (or "mirror")
of a set of data on the second drive. This is useful when reliability and backup are more
important than capacity. When one drive fails, it can be replaced and the data rebuilt.
Storage Capacity
RAID 10 "Drive Mirroring with Striping" Mode
Switch setting: UP-UP-DOWN
The drives show up as one volume, but only 50% of the total capacity can be used,
depending on the drive with the smallest capacity. RAID 10 creates an exact copy (or
"mirror") of a set of data but also uses a RAID 0 Stripe for speed. When one drive fails, it
can be replaced and the data rebuilt automatically.
Storage Capacity
RAID 3 "Drive Striping with Dedicated Parity" Mode
Switch setting: UP-DOWN-DOWN
The drives show up as one volume, but the total capacity, depending on the drive with
the smallest capacity, is the combined size minus the size of one drive. RAID 3 uses
byte level striping with parity data located on 1 drive. Very fast performance can be
achieved with RAID 3 while also maintaining fault protection, so if one drive fails, it can
be replaced and the data rebuilt automatically.
Storage Capacity
RAID 5 "Drive Striping with Distributed Parity" Mode
Switch setting: DOWN-UP-DOWN
The drives show up as one volume, but the total capacity, depending on the drive with
the smallest capacity, is the combined size minus the size of one drive. RAID 5 uses
block level striping with parity data distributed across all member disks and therefore
provides the perfect balance between high performance and data integrity. When one
drive fails, it can be replaced and the data rebuilt automatically.
Storage Capacity
Data Safety
Data Safety
Data Safety
Data Safety
Chapter 1 - Introduction
Performance
Performance
Performance
Performance