RAID Adapters

Redundant array of independent (or inexpensive) discs (RAID) has several defined levels, but the most common are 0, 1, and 5. RAID 0, which is also called striping, writes the data across two drives. This increases read and write speed but does not provide any protection. Think: “Zero” provides “zero” protection from data loss. Striping is the technique used to write the data across multiple disks. Consider that the processor is usually faster than the HDD, so it uses multiple HDDs simultaneously to handle the load.

RAID 1 is also called mirroring. Mirroring simply copies one HDD to the other. Think of looking at “one’s” self in the “mirror.” All data that is written to the first drive is also written to the second. This provides data protection if one drive fails, but it costs twice the amount of overhead because you’re maintaining two drives for the same data.