User Manual

NETGEAR’s Flex-RAID technology allows you to choose from among several
industry-standard RAID levels:
•
JBOD. This most basic RAID level does not protect your data from loss if one of your
drives fails. JBOD is available only on volumes consisting of a single hard disk.
•
RAID 0. RAID 0 distributes data across multiple disks, resulting in improved disk
performance compared to systems that do not use RAID formatting. The total capacity
of your storage system equals the capacity of the smallest of your disk drives times
the number of disks. RAID 0 is available on volumes consisting of two or more hard
disks.
•
RAID 1. This RAID level provides full redundancy of your data, because it duplicates
data across multiple disks. Exactly the same data is stored on two or more disks at
all times. RAID 1 protects your data from loss if one disk fails. The total capacity of
your storage system equals the capacity of your smallest disk.
•
RAID 5. This RAID level also provides data redundancy, but it requires at least three
disks. RAID 5 uses the capacity of one disk to protect you from data loss if one disk
fails. Your data is distributed across multiple disks to improve disk performance. The
total capacity of your storage system equals the capacity of all your disks minus the
capacity of one disk. It is supported on systems with at least four drive bays.
•
RAID 6. This RAID level provides recovery from the loss of two disks. Your data is
distributed across multiple disks to improve disk performance. The total capacity of
your storage system equals the capacity of all your disks minus the capacity of two
disks. It is supported on systems with at least four drive bays.
•
RAID 10 (or 1+0). This RAID level uses both RAID 1 and RAID 0 technology. First,
your data is duplicated so that exactly the same data is stored on two or more disks.
Then the data is distributed across additional disks to improve disk performance. It
is supported on systems with at least four drive bays.
•
RAID 50 (or 5+0). This RAID level uses both RAID 5 and RAID 0 technology. First,
a disk is used to provide redundancy. Then your data is distributed across multiple
disks to improve disk performance. A minimum of six disks are required. The total
capacity of your storage system equals the capacity of all your disks minus the capacity
of two disks.
•
RAID 60 (or 6+0). This RAID level uses both RAID 6 and RAID 0 technology. First,
two disks are used to provide redundancy. Then your data is distributed across
multiple disks to improve disk performance. A minimum of eight disks are required.
The total capacity of your storage system equals the capacity of all of your disks
minus the capacity of four disks.
The Flex-RAID levels that you can select depend on the number of disks included in the
volume. The following table describes the Flex-RAID levels that are available for a given
number of disks. It also indicates whether adding a disk for data protection is possible
for each configuration.
Software Manual27Volume Configuration
ReadyNAS OS 6.10