RAID 2, RAID 3, RAID 4 - What It Is, How It Works? The History Lesson
Updated on 20/09/2021 After RAID 0 and RAID 1 (with RAID 1+0 and RAID 0+1)…
Read MoreWe published an article about RAID 5: “How does RAID 5 work? The Shortest and Easiest explanation ever” – now is the time for the whole series. We will try to show you, in a few words, the shortest explanation for RAID standard levels – 0, 1, 1+0, 0+1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and Matrix. Now is the time for RAID 0 – take a look…
We can describe RAID 0 as a connection of two (or more) physical discs – so as to appear as one logical drive. In such a case, the whole capacity is equal to the number of discs multiplied by the capacity of the “smallest” one. i.e.- If we have two HDDs – 250GB and 500GB, the size of the array will be equal to 500GB.
RAID 0 is also called a “stripe set” or a “striped volume”. This is because data is split (striped) between discs – without parity information for redundancy. In other words, RAID 0 does not provide data redundancy. Inter-leveling of data between the disks causes a significant acceleration of read and write operations – due to the paralleling of these operations on all the discs in the array.
The capacity of the whole array is seen as a whole. By implementing such a solution, it is also possible to increase the read and write speed (but only compared to a single disk).
When we talk about RAID 0, it’s also necessary to write about the drawbacks. First is the issue of data safety. Such a method is not designed for data loss prevention. It means that the failure of one disc may cause the loss of all data contained in the array. Moreover, data recovery can be difficult because it’s distributed across all discs. It is also impossible to recover “striped” data. Even when using special (and costly) tools, the recovered data can be incomplete and corrupt.
The second thing is capacity. Even if two discs are used – 100 GB and 1TB – the array storage will equal 200GB. So the use of disks with different capacities is uneconomical because of the inability to use their full storage potential.
Because the only benefit of RAID 0 is its write/read speed, we can point to only one rational use for it – to build cheap and efficient arrays and use solutions based on the RAID 1+0 or RAID 0+1. Check this out for RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and RAID 1+0 solutions.
We know that your data is priceless – calculate how many disks you need to get it safe!
3 Comments
Mash
March 20, 03 2019 07:07:53The “only” use of RAID-0 isn’t speed, it’s also perfectly viable as a way of combining several disks into one large disk.
Say you want 2TBs of SSD storage.. a 2TB drive can be upwards of $800, but 500gb drives can be had for $100.. Buy 4x 100gb drives, RAID-0 them, and you’ve got 2TB of SSD storage.
The enhanced speed, at that point, is just icing on the cake.
Mash
March 20, 03 2019 07:09:22No edit function: Buy 4x 500GB drives** – Not 4x 100. This is what happens when you comment at 2am after a 20 hour coding bender.
Eitan Lindenberg
July 01, 07 2019 07:10:48I just read your article on RAID 5 and I was directed to check out this article. Very informative and I would love to check out more!