Can someone explain RAID in-depth to me please.

[Jake B]

So I don’t really know too much about RAID, I know it’s to do with multiple storage devices. Could you please describe to me exactly what it is, the benefits and how to set it up please.

 

Many thanks

[Moonzy]

3 minutes ago, Jake B said:

Could you please describe to me exactly what it is, the benefits

 

 

3 minutes ago, Jake B said:

how to set it up please.

what are you using it for and what do you currently own?

[ausham]

Redundant Array of Independent Disks...it mirrors and or stripes data over more then one disk for redundancy. there are more then one type of raid so I leave a more detailed answer to others.

[Radium_Angel]

2 minutes ago, Jake B said:

RAID

Redundant

Array of

Independent

Disks

 

Multiple disks give you protection of data in case one drive should fail.

Data is spread out over the disks, so a single point of failure doesn't destroy all your data.

 

There are many different versions of RAID.

 

1,5,10,20, etc

Each version does different things (spanning, striping, mirroring) and are specific for your data storage needs

[Jake B]

1 minute ago, Moonzy said:

 

 

what are you using it for and what do you currently own?

I’m not necessarily thinking about using it, it’s just a subject I don’t really know about so I wanted to know more and then I might think about using it. Thanks for the video links.

[Radium_Angel]

3 minutes ago, Jake B said:

Thanks for the video links.

A NAS (Network Attached Storage) is a Network device that uses RAID for data storage and is accessible across your network to other systems.

I have 5 NAS devices. Love them. Fantastic idea. 

[Moonzy]

1 minute ago, Jake B said:

I’m not necessarily thinking about using it, it’s just a subject I don’t really know about so I wanted to know more and then I might think about using it. Thanks for the video links.

u can watch those videos to learn about the difference between the RAIDs

 

RAID 1: generally not recommended anymore unless you only have 2 drive and the data is important, if you have 3 or more drive, consider RAID 5/6

RAID 0: used to be useful before SSD is a thing, definitely not recommended now, since the risk of data loss is much higher, NVME SSD should have enough bandwidth for almost everyone now.

 

RAID 10: no, waste of space imo

 

RAID 5: is good if you want to use several drive's capacity and also have redundancy, though you can only lose 1 drive before data is loss, so using it in huge array isnt recommended, use RAID 6 for that.

 

RAID 6: can be wasteful of capacity if you have less than a couple drives, but offer good redundancy.

 

there's also other type of raid like RAID z5 or something, the same concept but the store the drive by drive

so in the case that you do lose more than the redundancy's capacity (say, you lose 2 drive in a RAID 5), only the data that is on the lost drives is lost.

while regular RAID 5 will make you lose everything.

 

Windows Storage space is a good place to start with, it's very flexible and doesnt require a dedicated hardware.

[Real_PhillBert]

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I'm a really big fan of RAID1 for the general public.

 

As SSD boot drives with HDD storage configurations have become more popular I've pushed a few of my not as tech minded friends to add a second HDD in RAID1. It allows a layer of redundancy without any notable performance impact. I've personally had a HDD die, as well as two of my friends who I convinced to use RAID1, so no one lost any data. 

 

The downside is you double the price of your storage.

 

I totally agree with @Moonzy that RAID0 is basically unnecessary now, but I still have a RAID0 SSD array because I wanted a single volume for simplicity, but this was set up back when SSDs were much more expensive and limited on size. I paid more for my two 500gb SATA SSDs than you would pay for a 2TB NVME SSD today.