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There are many RAID levels to choose from, and it can be helpful to know how the levels differ. While RAID-1 and RAID-5 are probably the most well-known, other common levels include: RAID-0, RAID-6, and RAID-10. Here’s a rundown of these levels and what they offer:

RAID-0 combines two or more disks to increase performance and capacity, but there is no fault tolerance. A single disk failure will result in the loss of all data on the array. RAID-0 can be useful when fault tolerance is not necessary and a high value cost/performance balance is required.

RAID-1 is most often deployed with two disks. The disks are mirrored – providing fault tolerance. Read performance is increased while write performance will be similar to a single disk – if not less. A single disk failure can be sustained without data loss. RAID-1 is often used when fault tolerance is key and there isn’t an exceptional space or performance requirement.

RAID-5 provides fault tolerance and increased read performance – though write performance often suffers. A minimum of 3 disks are required. RAID-5 can sustain the loss of a single disk. In the event of a disk failure, the data from the failed disk is reconstructed from parity striped across the remaining disks. Due to this, both read and write performance is severely impacted while a RAID-5 array is in a degraded state. RAID-5 is ideal when space and cost more important than performance.

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