Other RAID Systems

We've seen the basics: RAID0 means data stripping, RAID1 means mirroring and they can be joined together as RAID0+1, RAID10 or JBOD. There are more RAID options, but they are not common in IDE RAID, i.e. RAID systems available on the motherboard target to the average user. These other RAID functions are:

• RAID2: Similar to RAID0, but with error correction scheme (ECC);
• RAID3: Similar to RAID0, but using an extra hard disk for parity information storage, thus enhancing the system reliability;
• RAID4: Similar to RAID3, but faster by using larger data chunks, i.e. the files are stripped into larger blocks;
• RAID5: Similar to RAID3 and RAID4, but saving the parity information inside the data disks not on an extra disk, so you won't need an extra disk;
• RAID53: Similar to RAID3 but using at least 5 hard disks, to enhance the system performance;
• RAID6: Based on RAID5, it saves an extra parity information on all hard disks of the system, enhancing the system reliability;
• RAID7: Trademark from a company called Storage Computer Corporation, it uses an extra disk to save parity information. Its main advantage is its speed, because it uses disk cache technique. It can be considered a RAID4 with disk cache.

Now that we've seen all RAID versions, let's talk about RAID implementation.

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