RAID types

RAID-0: RAID-0 is called disk "striping". All the data is spread out in chunks across all the disks in the RAID set. RAID-0 has great performance, because you spread out the load of storing data onto more physical drives. There is no parity generated for RAID-0. Therefore there is no overhead to write data to RAID-0 disks. RAID-0 is only good for better performance, and not for high availability, since parity is not generated for RAID-0 disks. RAID-0 requires at least two physical disks.

RAID-1: RAID-1 is called disk mirroring. All the data is written to at least two separate physical disks. The disks are essentially mirror images of each other. If one of the disks fails, the other can be used to retrieve data. Disk mirroring is good for very fast read operations. It's slower when writing to the disks, since the data needs to be written twice. RAID-1 requires at least two physical disks.

RAID-5: RAID-5 uses disk striping with parity. The data is striped across all the disks in the RAID set, along with the parity information needed to reconstruct the data in case of disk failure. RAID-5 is the most common method used, since it achieves a good balance between performance and availability. RAID-5 requires at least three physical disks.