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RAID configuration with three hard drives

Greg Schulz EXPERT RESPONSE FROM: Greg Schulz

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QUESTION POSED ON: 26 February 2007
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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EXPERT RESPONSE
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.


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