Things you might not know about Raid Systems

While many companies may use Raid to back up their most sensitive data, Raid was originally developed as an open source. Long before Raid, there was ZFS. It was ZFS designers that prioritised reliability and scalability. ZFS was developed by Sun Microsystems for their Solaris OS. This technology was then released under an open source for Windows, Mac OS and Linux. Did you know that Raid technology comes from Oracle? Oracle acquired Sun and billed ZFS’s features as ways to solve hardware problems.

If you are looking for speed alone and needing a system to copy and keep your files safe, Raid 0 may be a good option. In order to get the speed needed to keep a company’s data safe; Raid 0 takes data and stripes it across multiple disks that are written in parallel. While this type of system does speed up reading and writing times, it also means that your Raid volume is more likely to fail.

Needing reliability, Raid 1 is Ideal

A Raid system depends on something called “mirroring.” Raid allows data to be duplicated on two disks. This way, if a disk fails, companies do not lose sensitive data. A Raid volume can continue operating and a failing hard drive can be replaced. Raid 1 also has at least one advantage over Raid 0. Raid 0 may speed up the time it takes to read disks, but it doesn’t speed up the write times for disks.

Raid 10 can be even better for companies because it can handle large data files and create reliable volumes of data. Four disks are combined and offer twice the speed for reading and writing of files. With Raid 10, companies can lost two drives and still be able to keep operating. With Raid 10, companies get both speed and reliability. However, many companies would rather operate with a Raid 5 or Raid 6 system.  Does Raid 5 offer a better advantage over Raid 10? With not as many drives for reading or writing, Raid 10 clearly does have an advantage over Raid 10. However, Raid 10 still may take just as much time writing a drive as a Raid 5 system.

No matter what type of Raid system a business uses, Raid is still a good option to protect a business’s sensitive data.