I need a RAID Level 5 explanation....

[Rick]

Stripe set with Parity. It's a Raid level that will allow you to recover your data if one of the HD fails. If I remember right you can't have your boot or system partitions as part of a Raid 5 set, you'd have to mirror them to have a reliable backup.
Raid 5 can have anywhere from 3 to 32 hard drives and they must be the same size. If a drive fails, you simply replace that drive, then using your Raid software, select Regenerate or something similar and it'll recreate the missing data. Win2000 Server supports software level Raid 5. It's a little slower then a simple Stripe set because it needs to write the parity information.

[This message has been edited by Rick (edited 07 August 2000).]

[Guyver]

The parity information is spread out amongst all the drives. Hence if 1 drive fails, the 2 other drives' parity info can regenerate the missing data.

If 3 drives, 1/3 of each drive is parity.
If 4 drives, 1/4 of each drive is parity.
If 5 - you get the idea.
However, you generally cannot lose more than 1 drive in a RAID 5 config before it goes belly up.
If you want real reliability and performance, then RAID0+1 is where it's at. It takes the most amount of HD's (4x20GB=40GB), but is the most reliable, as well as outperforming RAID5.

Guyver

[xortam]

Check out the RAID presentation and docs at Mylex.

Adaptec also has an overview of RAID levels and a comparison of hardware versus software RAID.

Note that there are also multi-layer, spanning RAID configurations, 00, 10, 30, and 50.
Mylex supports PCI configurations as large as 720 drives (45 drives x 16 controllers). I use the Mylex Flashpoint LW controller in my Win98 system.

[MegaManX4]

I need a RAID Level 5 explanation....

It's all very confusing, Everyone states different things. Anyone can explain this Raid Level?

Mega

[CarterTG]

The last time I visited <A HREF="http://www.arstechnica.com/" TARGET="_top">Ars Technica</A>, they had an exhaustive <A HREF="http://arstechnica.com/paedia/r/raid-1.html" TARGET="_top">illustrated article</A> on everything I possibly wanted to know about all the Raid Levels available.

CTG

[This message has been edited by CarterTG (edited 08 August 2000).]

[Dilitante1]

BTW, you CAN have a bootable RAID5 array. That is built into the raid controller when the array is setup. Then the OS sees the array as a single drive. Just my .02$ worth.

-Dil



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