Comparing RAID Levels

Table 1 compares RAID levels across a number of parameters. These ratings are intended to help you identify RAID levels with characteristics suitable for your application.

Note: A specific quantitative comparison is not possible because RAID performance is dependent on a number of variables that are unique to the equipment setup, such as the number of physical disks, performance characteristics of those disks, spindle synchronization, performance characteristics of the RAID controller, among others.

Table 1  Comparing RAID Levels

RAID Level

0

1

1E

5

6

10

50

60

Read Performance

Write Performance

Fault Tolerance

Efficient use of disk capacity

Automatic rebuild

Minimum number of drives

2

Exactly 2

3

(only odd number of drives)

3

4

4

6

8