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This Users Manual
Driver CD
2. What Is RAID
RAID - Redundant Array of Independent Disks
RAID technology manages multiple disk drives to enhance I/O performance and provide
redundancy in order to withstand the failure of any individual member, without loss of
data.
Disk Striping (RAID 0)
Striping is a performance-oriented, non-redundant data mapping technique. While
Striping is discussed as a RAID Set type, it is actually does not provide fault tolerance.
With modern SATA bus mastering technology, multiple I/O operations can be done in
parallel, enhancing performance. Striping arrays use multiple disks to form a larger virtual
disk.
Disk Mirroring (RAID 1)
Disk mirroring creates an identical twin for a selected disk by having the data
simultaneously written to two disks. This redundancy provides instantaneous protection
from a single disk failure. If a read failure occurs on one drive, the system reads the
data from the other drive.
Mirrored-Striping (RAID 0+1 also known as RAID 10)
A Mirrored-Striping Set does just what it says, combining both Striping and Mirroring
technologies to provide both the performance enhancements that come from Striping and
the data availability and integrity that comes from Mirroring. When data is written to a
Mirrored-Striped Set, instead of creating just one virtual disk as Striping would do, a second,
Mirrored virtual disk is created as well.
Parity RAID (RAID 5)
Parity or RAID 5 adds fault tolerance to Disk Striping by including parity information
with the data. Parity RAID dedicates the equivalent of one disk for storing parity stripes.
The data and parity information is arranged on the disk array so that parity is written to
different disks. There are at least 3 members to a Parity RAID set. The following example
