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A Redundant Array of Independent Drives, more commonly referred to by its acronym, RAID, is a form of data storage that records your data across numerous different hard disks. The major benefit from having this type of data storage setup is that if one of the drives falters or crashes, the backup drives are readily available insuring that you don't skip a beat and / or lose any of your valuable documents, applications, programs, etc.
RAID systems can be extremely securing sources of data storage due to the fact that they mirror the exact same data across multiple platforms. There are numerous levels of RAID service, the major difference being the number of platforms over which the same data is mirrored. (You will know immediately when you have a problem with one of the drives, and can act on it at that point. I.E, there is really no reason to exceed a certain number of drives over which the data is shared, because the chances are you will correct the problem after it occurs and have the drive up and running again without too much hassle. Basically, there isn't much of a need to install more than 2 or maybe 3 drives over which the data is shared)
RAID service is sometimes referred to by other names including disk mirroring, disk striping, and/or fault tolerance. The following is a short list of the RAID levels and their corresponding features. These levels are as follows:
- Level 0: Although this level provides data striping it does not provide redundancy. This improves the performance of the drive, but it doesn't deliver any kind of fault tolerance.
- Level 1: This level provides disk mirroring; a tool with which data is written across two drives so that if 1 fails, the other remains as a backup.
- Level 3: This level is more or less the same as Level 0, with the one difference that it does provide a certain degree of fault tolerance.
- Level 5: This level provides users with data striping at the byte level, along with stripe error correction info. The result is superior performance and good fault tolerance.
The most common levels of RAID that are employed are levels 1, 3 & 5. Whereas RAID systems have generally been solely associated with business use in the past due to excess costs, the recent falling prices of hard drives has allowed for a RAID crossover into the personal / home use sector. If you are looking for an extremely secure data storage system that affords quicker retrieval of data and up-to-the-minute data backup, then you should continue your RAID research to learn more.
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