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What is RAID and raid striping, mirroring, or parity?

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Please explain in simple language, if possible then in layman's terms. I want to understand only basics not in deep.

posted Jan 6, 2015 by anonymous

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1 Answer

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In simple language RAID [Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks] is a way of combining several independent and relatively small disks into a single storage of a large size (you can guess what would be the advantage of it). The disks included into the array are called array members. The disks can be combined into the array in different ways which are known as RAID levels.

The three terms (striping, mirroring and parity) you are talking about are RAID storage techniques
Striping - splitting the flow of data into blocks of a certain size (called "block size") then writing of these blocks across the RAID one by one. This way of data storage affects on the performance.
Mirroring is a storage technique in which the identical copies of data are stored on the RAID members simultaneously. This affects the fault tolerance as well as the performance.
Parity is a storage technique which is utilized striping and checksum methods. In parity technique, a certain parity function is calculated for the data blocks. If a drive fails, the missing block are recalculated from the checksum, providing the RAID fault tolerance.

All the existing RAID types are based on striping, mirroring, parity, or combination of these storage techniques.

answer Jan 6, 2015 by Salil Agrawal
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