Most of the OWC external enclosures and drives come with softRAID. We get a lot of questions from customers asking for advice, so we have written a simple guide that should answer most questions.
RAID - what is it good for?
RAID combines multiple drives into one unit. You can combine multiple drives and make them perform as one. There are multiple types of RAID, made for different scenarios. Simple JBOD which gives you one big storage space. You can make the array fast or built in protection or both!
Key RAID Concepts
Striping: Data is divided into blocks and distributed across multiple drives, improving read/write speeds.
Mirroring: Data is duplicated on multiple drives, providing redundancy and fault tolerance.
Parity: A calculated value used to reconstruct data in case of a drive failure.
Common RAID levels:
RAID 0 (Striping):
Provides high performance by distributing data across multiple drives, but offers no redundancy. If one drive fails, all data is lost. You need a minimum of 2 disks.
If you have 16tb of total storage, RAID 0 gives you 16tb of storage.
RAID 1 (Mirroring):
Offers data redundancy by mirroring data across two or more drives. If one drive fails, the other(s) contain a complete copy of the data. You need a minimum of 2 disks.
If you have two 4gb SSDs for a total of 8tb, usable space is 4tb. If you have four 4tb SSDs of a total of 16tb, then the usable space is 4tb. Every piece of data written to the array is duplicated on each drive.
RAID 5 (Striping with Parity):
Combines striping and parity. Data is striped across multiple drives, and parity information is distributed across all drives. This allows for data reconstruction in case of a single drive failure. You need a minimum of 3 disks.
The total usable storage capacity is typically the capacity of all drives minus the capacity of one drive, which is used for parity information. If you have four 4tb SSDs of a total of 16tb, then the usable space is 12tb and 4tb for parity.
RAID 10 (Mirroring and Striping):
A combination of RAID 1 and RAID 0. Data is mirrored and then striped, offering both high performance and redundancy. You need a minimum of 4 disks.
The usable storage capacity is typically half of the total raw storage capacity provided by the drives. If you have four 4tb SSDs of a total of 16tb, then the usable space is 8tb.
JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks): Drives are combined into a single logical volume, but offer no redundancy. If your total raw capacity is 16tb then you have a total of 16tb.
What RAID Should I use?
Within the multimedia community: (photo/video) the most common RAID is 5 and 10.
These RAID give you back up and speed, without losing too much space for redundancy.