User Guide

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Marvell RAID Utility User Guide
Selecting a RAID Level 4-39
4.4 Comparing RAID Levels
Each RAID level has features that may or may not be suitable in certain situations, so it is
important to carefully consider which RAID level is best suited for a particular purpose.
4.4.1 RAID 0 (striping)
RAID 0 is simple to implement and provides increased reading and writing speed by
spreading the transfer of data across multiple channels and drives. However, RAID 0 does
not provide fault-tolerance, so all of the data is lost if one or more physical disks fail.
4.4.2 RAID 1 (mirroring)
RAID 1 is simple to implement and features automatic fault-tolerance. RAID 1 also provides
increased read performance because data can be requested in parallel. However, write
performance is decreased because two writes are required for each write command. Also,
RAID 1 uses just 50 percent of the total disk capacity.
4.4.3 RAID 10 (mirroring and striping)
RAID 10 features automatic fault-tolerance and provides increased reading and writing
speed by spreading the transfer of data across multiple channels and drives. However, RAID
10 uses just 50 percent of the total disk space and scalability is limited at a high inherent cost.
4.4.4 Overview of RAID Levels
Table 4-1 gives an overview of the features for each RAID level.
Table 4-1 RAID Features
Features RAID 0 RAID 1 RAID 10
Simple implementation
√√
Improved read speed
√√√
Improved write speed
√√
Fault-tolerance
√√
Efficient use of disk capacity
√
Scalable
√√
Automatic rebuild
√√
Minimum number of drives 2 2 4