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RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks)

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3 views

RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks)

RAID full information

Uploaded by

sadhnakumari9608
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Computer Architecture

RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) RAID (redundant array of independent disks; originally
redundant array of inexpensive disks) provides a way of storing the same data in different places (thus,
redundantly) on multiple hard disks (though not all RAID levels provide redundancy). By placing data on
multiple disks, input/output (I/O) operations can overlap in a balanced way, improving performance. Since
multiple disks increase the mean time between failures (MTBF), storing data redundantly also increases
fault tolerance. RAID arrays appear to the operating system (OS) as a single logical hard disk. RAID employs
the technique of disk mirroring or disk striping, which involves partitioning each drive's storage space into
units ranging from a sector (512 bytes) up to several megabytes. The stripes of all the disks are interleaved
and addressed in order. In a single-user system where large records, such as medical or other scientific
images, are stored, the stripes are typically set up to be small (perhaps 512 bytes) so that a single record
spans all disks and can be accessed quickly by reading all disks at the same time. In a multi-user system,
better performance requires establishing a stripe wide enough to hold the typical or maximum size record.
This allows overlapped disk I/O across drives. Standard RAID levels RAID 0: This configuration has striping
but no redundancy of data. It offers the best performance but no fault-tolerance

Computer Organization and Architecture

RAID 1: Also known as disk mirroring, this configuration consists of at least two drives that duplicate the
storage of data. There is no striping. Read performance is improved since either disk can be read at the
same time. Write performance is the same as for single disk storage.
RAID 2: This configuration uses striping across disks with some disks storing error checking and correcting
(ECC) information. It has no advantage over RAID 3 and is no longer used.

RAID 3: This technique uses striping and dedicates one drive to storing parity information. The embedded
ECC information is used to detect errors. Data recovery is accomplished by calculating the exclusive OR
(XOR) of the information recorded on the other drives. Since an I/O operation addresses all drives at the
same time, RAID 3 cannot overlap I/O. For this reason, RAID 3 is best for single-user systems with long
record applications.

RAID 4: This level uses large stripes, which means you can read records from any single drive. This allows
you to use overlapped I/O for read operations. Since all write operations have to update the parity drive,
no I/O overlapping is possible. RAID 4 offers no advantage over RAID 5.

RAID 5: This level is based on block-level striping with parity. The parity information is striped across each
drive, allowing the array to function even if one drive were to fail. The array’s architecture allows read and
write operations to span multiple drives. This results in performance that is usually better than that of a
single drive, but not as high as that of a RAID 0 array. RAID 5 requires at least three disks, but it is often
recommended to use at least five disks for performance reasons. RAID 5 arrays are generally considered
to be a poor choice for use on write-intensive systems because of the performance impact associated with
writing parity information. When a disk does fail, it can take a long time to rebuild a RAID 5 array.
Performance is usually degraded during the rebuild time and the array is vulnerable to an additional disk
failure until the rebuild is complete.

RAID 6: This technique is similar to RAID 5 but includes a second parity scheme that is distributed across
the drives in the array. The use of additional parity allows the array to continue to function even if two
disks fail simultaneously. However, this extra protection comes at a cost. RAID 6 arrays have a higher cost
per gigabyte (GB) and often have slower write performance than RAID 5 arrays.

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