What is RAID?

RAID (redundant array of independent disks) is a technology which is used to store same data in
different places on multiple devices. RAID is used to increase the performance or reliability of
data store. While in case of drive failure solid state drives are used.

Working of RAID?
It works on multiple disks by placing data and allowing input/output operations to overlap in a
balanced way. It also improves performance. By using the multiple disks it increases the mean
time between failures. It increases the fault tolerance by storing data redundantly.

In operating system (OS) RAID arrays appear as a single logical drive. RAID employs the
techniques of disk mirroring or disk striping. Mirroring will copy identical data onto more than
one drive. Striping partitions helps spread data over multiple disk drives. Each drive's storage
space is divided into units and each sector contains  (512 bytes) to several megabytes. The stripes
of all the disks are interleaved and addressed in order.

Different Levels of RAID

RAID 0:

RAID 0 is based on striping technique. This RAID level doesn't provide fault tolerance but
increases the system performance (high read and write speed).

RAID 1:

RAID 1 is based on mirroring technique, increases read speed in some cases, and provides fault
tolerance in the loss of no more than one member disk.

RAID 2:

RAID 2 is rarely used in practice, stripes data at the bit (rather than block) level, and uses
a Hamming code for error correction. The disks are synchronized by the controller to spin at the
same angular orientation (they reach index at the same time)

RAID 3:

RAID 3 which is used in practice, consists of byte level striping with a dedicated parity disk.
One of the characteristics of RAID 3 is that it generally cannot service multiple requests
simultaneously.  RAID 3 was usually implemented in hardware, and the performance issues were
addressed by using large disk caches.
RAID 4:

RAID 4 consists of block level striping with a dedicated parity disk. As a result of its layout,

RAID 4 provides good performance of random reads, while the performance of random writes is
low due to the need to write all parity data to a single disk.

RAID 5:

It utilizes both striping and parity techniques. Provides the read speed improvement as in RAID 0
approximately, survives the loss of one RAID member disk.

RAID 5E:

In RAID 5 layout the only difference of which is an integrated spare space allowing to rebuild a
failed array immediately in case of a disk failure.

RAID 5 with delayed parity:

It is similar to basic RAID 5 layout, but uses nonstandard scheme of striping. More information
about RAID5 with delayed parity.

Safest RAID configuration

RAID 0 is fast but utterly unsafe, RAID 1 is safe but slow, RAID 5 is safe but not so fast,
especially on the cheap controllers (XOR calculations).

It seems that RAID 1+0 or RAID 10 is the best combination. You get mirroring for safety and
striping for speed. The only drawback of the RAID 10 is inefficient storage utilization.