We are all clear about what a hard drive is, but there is another concept related to these that you may have heard and that you do not know what it is or why you should take it into account: hard drive RAID. What is a RAID and what is it for? What are the advantages of using this type of system or what types are there that we can choose from?
If you are familiar with hardware terms, you will know what it is, but if you have heard of RAID and do not know why or what it is, we will explain it to you.
What is a RAID and what is it for?
RAID means Redundant Array of Independent Disks or Redundancy Matrix of Independent Disks in Spanish, although not all of them offer this redundancy, as we will see in the next paragraphs. A RAID is a combination of multiple storage drives acting as a single drive at the same time. To get better speed, to get data duplicity… Depending on the type of raid we will get more or less available space, more or less duplicity.
The RAID allows us to have a single volume with several hard drives that work as a set whether we want to make copies or if we want to multiply the space but using it as a single drive. It may be to have greater speed, as we have explained, or to have data redundancy with information that would be copied to both disks and that would allow us to save the content in case one fails.
RAID types and uses
There are many types of RAID and depending on the type it has one mission or another. RAID 0 is intended for speed and RAID 1 is intended for redundancy or to get data written to both at the same time.
- RAID 0
The type of RAID 0 allows us to have higher writing and reading speeds. A RAID is used because we manage to multiply the speed with several disks. Of course, we need to have two disks or more and the content is written to them alternately. We multiply the volume if we have two different disks, but the information is not duplicated on both. If one of them fails, we lose the data because it is written, as we say, alternately in both.
- RAID 1
Another of the most common types is RAID 1. Unlike the previous one, here the data is not written alternately, but rather the data is written to both disks simultaneously. One is an exact copy of the other in a process called “disk mirroring ” and whose main objective is to have a backup copy of the content. In case one breaks, we can have the other without problem. Using this type of RAID can have drawbacks because we do not get more writing speed and we cannot multiply the available space.
- RAID 5
Beyond the above we have RAID 5 which is a type of RAID that allows us to have as many hard drives as we want with a minimum of three. One of them is used to duplicate the data of the others but we have more disks that allow us to improve the speed and reading performance. It is a much more complete and versatile option but also a much more expensive option when investing in them because we will need a minimum of three discs compared to the two of other types.
