3. Understanding RAID
page 15
LaCie Biggest S1S
User’s Manual
3. Understanding RAID
Your LaCie Biggest S1S is shipped with a pre-configured RAID level of 5, but it supports four different RAID levels: 0, 0 + 1, 5
and 5 + Hot Spare. This section will help you decide which RAID level is right for your application.
3.1. RAID 0
Striped Disk Array Without Fault Tolerance
Also called striping, this level offers high transfer rates and is ideal for large blocks of data where speed is of the utmost
importance. RAID 0 implements a striped disk array, where all of the hard disks are linked together to form one large
aggregate hard disk. In this configuration, data is broken down into blocks and each block is written to a separate disk drive
within the array; I/O performance is greatly improved by spreading the I/O load across several drives. In this array,
however, when one disk fails, all of the data on the array is lost.
Storage capacity is determined by the smallest disk in the array, and the smallest disk’s capacity is applied to all of the other
disks in the array. So, for instance, if you had four disks installed, ranging in capacity from 40GB to 80GB, when the RAID 0
array is built your system will see one, 160GB (40GB x 4) hard disk.
While this is a very simple and easily implemented design, RAID 0 should never be used in mission critical environments.
When even just one disk in the array fails, all of the data on the entire array will be lost.
Characteristics & Advantages
• Data is broken down into blocks and each block is written
to a separate disk drive
• I/O performance improved by spreading the load across
multiple drives
• Overhead is lowered due to no calculations for parity
• Simple design and easily implemented
Recommended Uses
• Video production and editing
• Image editing
• Pre-press applications
• Applications requiring high-bandwidth
A
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Etc...
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CONTROLLER
This diagram represents a
RAID 0 array, consisting of
four disks, which are
connected to the Controller.
Data blocks are distributed
across all of the disks in the
array.
