RAID configuration with three hard drives

RAID configuration with three hard drives

In the RAID-1 system, is there a way to configure the RAID-1 with three total hard drives (in order to tolerate two simultaneous drive failures)?

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The answer is going to depend upon whose implementation of RAID-1 you are using and if it supports a multi-drive RAID-1 configuration. I have worked with systems in the past that support three drive RAID-1 configurations (or more) to address what you are looking for as well as to improve read performance.

So yes, its is possible to have more than two drives in a mirror set, however, it will come down to whose RAID hardware system, controller, adapter or software you are using and what they actually support.

This was first published in March 2007