Appendix 1 What Is Raid - Xtore NASolution NP1040 User Manual

Appendix 1
What is RAID?
The acronym RA ID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Drives,
a method to combine a number of small, inexpensive drives into an
array which offers more functionality than a single large disk with
comparable capacity, while simultaneously taking advantage of the
individual disks to increase the efficiency of the system. In other words,
during the writing process, data is split into segments and stored on
multiple disks; likewise, during the reading process, data is retrieved
simultaneously from multiple disks in order to increase the access
speed of the array.
RAID can also be configured to use part of the disk capacity for
mirroring or redundant data, thus preserving the integrity of the
system in case one of the disks in the array fails.
NASolution NP1040 supports RAID levels 0, 1, 5 and 5 with hot
spare, described below:
RAID level
RAID 0 Offers Striping, a process where multiple disks are
combined to form one virtual large disk, but without
s a f e t y m e a s u r e s .
RAID 1 Half of the disks are used for b ackup purposes; the
c o n t e n t o f d i s k A i s m i r r o r e d t o d i s k B t o a s s u r e
data integrity. The available storage space is only
one half of total physical disk capacity.
RAID 5 T h i s c o n f i g u r a t i o n i n c l u d e s a b a c k u p o p t i o n . I t
146 What is RAID?
NFP Storage Manager 1.1 User's Manual
Functionality