Most people know their RAID 0, 1 and 5, but beyond that, things can get pretty hairy, pretty fast. Below are examples of some of the more exotic RAID levels you may come across.
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| |
WHAT |
PROS |
CONS |
| RAID 6 |
Like RAID 5 (block level striping and distributed parity), but with dual parity for each data block |
Improved fault tolerance over RAID 5 - can handle the failure of any two drives in the array |
Slower writes than RAID 5 |
| RAID 30 |
Striping (RAID 0) across RAID 3 (byte-level striping | |
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| with dedicated parity disk) sub-arrays |
RAID 0-like speeds, with increased fault tolerance |
Complex, expensive to implement |
| RAID 51 |
Mirroring combined with block striping and distributed parity |
Maximum fault tolerance and availability through mirroring and distributed parity |
Low storage efficiency |
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This was first published in October 2002