Faster data transfer needs faster hard drive response time when reading and writing data on the platter. Also faster revolution per minute is required to maximize hard drive response so that we will be able to be crunching enormous files on our server and on occasions it can be real slow. So someone discussed we need quicker hard drives called raid. What is a raid setup on a PC system?
Like anything else it depends who you speak to.
Raid drive systems had their acronym explained as “Redundant Array of Individual Drives “and “Redundant Spread of Cheap Drives”. The acronym for that is the shortened term “RAID”.
Capacity, trustworthiness and performance are all significant for file servers or other computer systems when you're storing large or very important files.
It is commonly said that “It isn't if you hard drive won't be successful. It is at what point in time your drive will fail”.
Naturally if your hard drives fail regardless of whether you have backup the last bit of data which was being written onto the drive when the failure took place will be lost.
You can get much greater capacities, avoid losing info from disk failure, and do all this with the RAID (the acronym for the system).
Image via Wikipedia
RAID can now be done with standard available hard drives so that the cost is now within your price bracket for all of the benefits and reassurance RAID will give you.
RAID can be simply explained as putting the hard drives in parallel sequence.
The host adapter (often called the RAID system controller) sits between one higher stream (on the computer side) and a few lower rate information streams (on the drive side). When the computer writes to the disks, the host adapter takes high stream info and breaks it into many synchronized streams, one for each of the disks in process called “Striping “. On reading the data the host adapter takes the info stream from each disk multiplexes the sets of information streams and coordinates sending the resulting combined set of information onto the computer.
Image via Wikipedia
It's all a matter of redundancy which makes RAID such a nice thing in most cases.
There are six various levels of RAID functionality depending on your needs. “the level of data integrity and integrity you would like as well as the size of drive space you want.
First of RAID Level 0 which spreads the data across multiple disks. It's easy to get an analogous effect to the RAID Level 0 by having multiple disks and using the features in Windows 2000 or its successor Windows XP.
Since the information volume and rate to any explicit disk is a fraction of the total you may receive larger capacity and better performance from a RAID 0 setup than from any one traditional disk.
As well info can be obtained from multiple drives as once. This is often most handy in shared scenarios which may gain benefit from enhancements in speed, two examples which come to mind are game servers and peer-to-peer (P2P) file or music file sharing servers.
Image by boboroshi via Flickr
However since there is no grant for error correction or redundancy RAID 0 isn't a safe system for crucial info. Info will be lost on disk failure. Only use RAID 0 in eventualities where you need the extended disk capacity or performance gain though not reinforced info trustworthiness.
Second in sequence there's RAID Level 1.
In the same way that RAID 0 focuses only on storage space and performance with no concern at all on trusty info storage RAID 1, which us also called “Disk Mirroring” uses disks in pairs to save the files in a redundant manner.
One or two points.
One performance might be slower as it will take time for the host adapter to send the info and for the drives to draft it to disk,
Image by dannyman via FlickrSecondly a user may remove or damage files which of course will be stored in that way on both drives.
Raid 1 hence offers better trustworthiness than RAID 0 or the conventional drive setups but doesn't give full security for your information or enhanced performance.
Next in sequence we have RAID Levels 2, 3 and 4.
Raid 2 adds one or more disks to hold inaccuracy correction codes with which lost info can be reconstructed.
Raid Level 3 is the same as RAID Level 2 but uses a faster code the maximum storage capability with Raid 3 might be moderately less.
Raid Level 4 is nearly the same as RAID LEVEL 3 but rather than “Striping” across disks is operates at a sector level, You now have the better situation of both a simpler, less intensive demanding system and as well as good information reliability. In addition performance might be boosted as large information blocks can be written quicker due to more coordinated writing to the drives in smaller “sector” areas.
Finally is RAID Level 5.
Raid level 5 is the same as the fantastic RAID Level 4 except that rather than dedicating a single disk to storing the info the data stream is striped across all the disks. You have larger performance with larger reliability for your personal computer systems.
A RAID setup may take some effort and training on your part.
Base your planning for your new RAID system on a careful analysis of your needs.
What is critical in your current position now? Disk size capacities, info trustworthiness and integrity, performance or a combination or all.
