RAID

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. On this page, you can
learn a few things about RAID Management, Hardware RAID, Mirror RAID, RAID
Controllers, RAID Stripe, OS RAID and much more!
Some Important Definitions before we move ahead:
The term Physical Disk is used to indicate One Single Hard Disk Drive Unit,
which is made up of one or many Discs. Discs are the Spinning Magnetic Platters inside
the Hard Disk Drive where data is stored.
Formatting is the process of dividing a Hard Disk Drive into Tracks and Sectors.
Before any Hard Disk Drive can be used, it has to be formatted so that a file system can
be defined and data can be stored in it.
A Partition is a portion of a Hard Disk Drive which functions as a separate storage unit.
A Partition is represented by a Drive Letter. A Drive Letter can be anything from A to Z.
But the drive letters A, B & C are Reserved Drive Letters. The Drive Letter A & B are
reserved for Floppy Disk Drives and C is reserved for the System Partition.
A Hard Disk Drive can have more than one Partition.
A Basic Hard Disk Drive can have up to 04 Primary Partitions out of which at
least01 Primary Partition has to be an Active Partition to put the Operating System files
into. But it can have only 01 Extended Partition. You can create Logical Drives on the
Extended Partition.
Information about the number and size of each partition is stored in a Partition Table
in the Master Boot Record (MBR).
Multiple Drive Letters do not necessarily mean multiple Hard Disk Drive Units. Instead
they can just denote multiple partitions on the same Hard Disk Drive.

A Volume is a Logical Storage Unit on a Hard Disk Drive (HDD).

A Volume can be created from the entire partition or just a part of it.
It is possible to create more than one volume out of a Single Hard Disk Drive.

It is possible to create just One Single Volume with space used from Multiple Hard Disk
Drives. (Thats the concept of RAID!)
REDUNDANT ARRAY OF INDEPENDENT DISKS (RAID)
RAID is an acronym for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. Some people just
prefer to call it Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, for fun! RAID is usually
implemented on Servers.
NOTE: Disks are of two types – Basic Disks and Dynamic Disks.
Basic Disks contain Primary Partitions,Extended Partitions and Logical Drives on
Extended Partitions.

Dynamic Disks contain Volumes. Like, Simple Volume, Spanned Volume, Stripped
Volume, Mirrored Volume & Stripped Volume with Parity.

Simple Volumes are created by converting Basic Disks to Dynamic Disks (One disk,
one Volume, One Partition)
A Spanned Volume is one that is created by adding free space from existing partitions
of different Hard Disk Drives. For this you will need a minimum of 02 HDDs and a
maximum of 32 HDDs.
Stripped Volumes, also known as RAID 0, needs a minimum of 02 HDDs and a
maximum of 32 HDDs. For example, when only 02 HDDs are used, data is stored
equally on both the disks. If one disk fails, it means that only half of the data will be
available. Here, data is written equally in each of the disks.
Mirrored Volumes – Also known RAID 1. Creates a Duplicate Read Only copy of
data on the Second Hard Disk Drive.
Stripped with Parity – Also known as RAID 5. Required a minimum of 03 HDDs
and a Maximum of 32 HDDs. To make it very simple, Parity is a mathematical
calculation that gives us an idea about the data in the next HDD. If one disk fails, data
can be regenerated using Parity.
You can span a maximum of 32 Disks in a RAID
Did you know?
RAID is implemented using SCSI Hard Disk Drives.
SCSI Hard Disk Drives:
SCSI 1 – Supports 07 Disks
SCSI 2 – Supports 15 Disks
SCSI 3 – Supports 32 Disks

There are 05 Levels of RAID. However, we commonly use only RAID Levels
0,1 and 5.
They are as given below:
RAID 0 – Also known as Stripped Volumes
RAID 1 – Known as Mirrored Volumes
RAID 2 – Not used
RAID 3 – Not used
RAID 4 – Not used
RAID 5 – Known as Stripped Volumes with Parity.

The Disk Management Console is used to manage all

the Basic and Dynamic Disks. You can start it by typing diskmgmt.msc in
the RUN Dialogue box.