Motherboard Manual
RAID 10:
Features and Benefits
Drives: Minimum 4, and maximum is 6 or 8, depending on the platform.
Benefits: Optimizes for both fault tolerance and performance, allowing for automatic
redundancy. May be simultaneously used with other RAID levels in an array, and
allows for spare disks.
Drawbacks: Requires twice the available disk space for data redundancy, the same
as RAID level 1.
Fault Tolerance: Yes.
RAID 5:
Features and Benefits
Drives: Minimum 3.
Uses: RAID 5 is recommended for transaction processing and general purpose
service.
Benefits: An ideal combination of good performance, good fault tolerance, and high
capacity and storage efficiency.
Drawbacks: Individual block data transfer rate same as a single disk. Write
performance can be CPU intensive.
Fault Tolerance: Yes.
Note: The RAID 5 function is only supported by A88X chip set.
32
RAID 10 combines the advantages
(and disadvantages) of RAID 0 and
RAID 1 in one single system. It
provides security by mirroring all data
on a secondary set of disks (disk 3 and
4 in the drawing below) while using
striping across each set of disks to
speed up data transfers.
A RAID 5 array can withstand a single
disk failure without losing data or
access to data. Although RAID 5 can
be achieved in software, a hardware
controller is recommended. Often extra
cache memory is used on these
controllers to improve the write
performance.