Chapter 4: Getting Started ● 31Choosing a RAID LevelThis section provides a brief overview of the RAID levels supported by your Adaptec RAIDcontroller, including the minimum and maximum number of disk drives required by each.Note: Before you begin, familiarize yourself with your Adaptec controller’s physical featuresand the RAID levels that it supports (see Standard RAID Controller Features on page 16).● RAID 0 (Non-redundant Array)—Stripes data across multiple disk drives. Improvedperformance but no redundancy (see page 75).● RAID 1 Array—Created from two disk drives where one disk drive is a mirror of the other(the same data is stored on each disk drive). Redundancy, but reduced capacity (see page 76).● RAID 1E Array—Similar to a RAID 1 array except that data is mirrored and striped, and moredisk drives can be included (see page 76).● RAID 5 Array—Stripes data for improved performance and uses parity data to provideredundancy (see page 78).● RAID 5EE Array—Similar to a RAID 5 array, but includes a distributed spare and mustinclude a minimum of four disk drives (see page 79).● RAID 10 Array—Built from two or more equal-sized RAID 1 arrays, stripes and mirrorsdata across multiple disk drives. Redundancy and improved performance (see page 77).● RAID 50 Array—Built from multiple disk drives configured as two or more RAID 5arrays, stripes stored data and parity data across all disk drives (see page 80).● RAID 6 Array—Similar to a RAID 5 array except that it includes two independent sets ofparity data instead of one (see page 81).● RAID 60 Array—Similar to a RAID 50 array except that it includes four independent setsof parity data instead of two (see page 81).Use the table on page 82 to see how many disk drives you must connect to your RAIDcontroller to support the RAID level you want.
