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Raid

RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) uses multiple disk drives to increase performance and provide fault tolerance. It distributes data across disks and uses parity to enable data recovery if a disk fails. The main RAID levels are: RAID 0 uses striping for performance but no redundancy. RAID 1 uses mirroring to duplicate all data on two disks. RAID 5 distributes parity across disks and allows one disk failure. RAID 6 provides even higher availability with double parity that allows two disk failures.

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Ehab Rushdy
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141 views4 pages

Raid

RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) uses multiple disk drives to increase performance and provide fault tolerance. It distributes data across disks and uses parity to enable data recovery if a disk fails. The main RAID levels are: RAID 0 uses striping for performance but no redundancy. RAID 1 uses mirroring to duplicate all data on two disks. RAID 5 distributes parity across disks and allows one disk failure. RAID 6 provides even higher availability with double parity that allows two disk failures.

Uploaded by

Ehab Rushdy
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© © All Rights Reserved
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RAID

(Redundant Array of Independent Disks)

1. RAID is a set of physical disk drives viewed by the operating system as a single logical drive.
2. Data are distributed across the physical drives of an array in a scheme known as striping,
described subsequently.
3. Redundant disk capacity is used to store parity information, which guarantees data
recoverability in case of a disk failure.

1
RAID Level 0
RAID level 0 is not a true member of the RAID family because it does not include redundancy to
improve performance. However, there are a few applications, such as some on supercomputers
in which performance and capacity are primary concerns and low cost is more important than
improved reliability. For RAID 0, the user and system data are distributed across all of the disks
in the array. This has a notable advantage over the use of a single large disk: If two different I/O
requests are pending for two different blocks of data, then there is a good chance that the
requested blocks are on different disks. Thus, the two requests can be issued in parallel,
reducing the I/O queuing time.
But RAID 0, as with all of the RAID levels, goes further than simply distributing the data across a
disk array: The data are striped across the available disks. This is best understood by
considering Figure 6.9.All of the user and system data are viewed.
RAID Level 1
RAID 1 differs from RAID levels 2 through 6 in the way in which redundancy is achieved. In other
RAID schemes, some form of parity calculation is used to introduce redundancy, whereas in
RAID 1, redundancy is achieved by the simple expedient of duplicating all the data. As Figure
shows, data striping is used, as in RAID 0. But in this case, each logical strip is mapped to two
separate physical disks so that every disk in the array has a mirror disk contains the same data.
RAID Level 2
RAID levels 2 and 3 make use of a parallel access technique. In a parallel access array, all
member disks participate in the execution of every I/O request. Typically, the spindles of the
individual drives are synchronized so that each disk head is in the same position on each disk at
any given time.

2
3
RAID Level 3
RAID 3 is organized in a similar fashion to RAID 2.The difference is that RAID 3 requires only a
single redundant disk, no matter how large the disk array. RAID 3 employs parallel access, with
data distributed in small strips. Instead of an error-correcting code, a simple parity bit is
computed for the set of individual bits in the same position on all of the data disks.

REDUNDANCY
In the event of a drive failure, the parity drive is accessed and data is reconstructed from the
remaining devices. Once the failed drive is replaced, the missing data can be restored on the
new drive and operation resumed.
RAID Level 4
RAID levels 4 through 6 make use of an independent access technique. In an independent
access array, each member disk operates independently. With RAID 4, a bit-by-bit parity strip is
calculated across corresponding strips on each data disk, and the parity bits are stored in the
corresponding strip on the parity disk.
RAID Level 5
RAID 5 is organized in a similar fashion to RAID 4.The difference is that RAID 5 distributes the
parity strips across all disks. A typical allocation is a round-robin scheme, as illustrated in Figure
6.8f. For an n-disk array, the parity strip is on a different disk for the first n stripes, and the
pattern then repeats.
RAID Level 6
In the RAID 6 scheme, two different parity calculations are carried out and stored in separate
blocks on different disks. Thus, a RAID 6 array whose user data require N disks consists of N 2
disks. Figure illustrates the scheme. P and Q are two different data check algorithms. This
makes it possible to regenerate data even if two disks containing user data fail.
The advantage of RAID 6 is that it provides extremely high data availability.

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