Filter
Top Products
Array Basics
A-5
RAID 3 3 Block-level data
striping with
dedicated parity
drive
Excellent
performance for
large, sequential
data requests
Not well-suited for
transaction-
oriented network
applications; single
parity drive does
not support
multiple,
concurrent and
write requests
RAID 4
(Not
widely
used)
3 Block-level data
striping with
dedicated parity
drive
Data striping
supports multiple
simultaneous read
requests
Write requests
suffer from same
single parity-drive
bottleneck as
RAID 3; RAID 5
offers equal data
protection and
better performance
at same cost
RAID 5 3 Block-level data
striping with
distributed parity
Best
cost/performance
for transaction-
oriented networks;
very high
performance and
data protection;
supports multiple
simultaneous reads
and writes; can also
be optimized for
large, sequential
requests
Write performance
is slower than
RAID 0 or RAID 1
RAID 50 6 Combination of
RAID 0 (data
striping) and
RAID 5 with
distributed parity
Better random
performance and
data protection
than RAID 5
Lower storage
capacity than
RAID 5
Table A-1. Comparing RAID Levels (Continued)
RAID
Level
Min No.
of Drives Description Strengths Weaknesses