What Is RAID 0 (disk Striping)? - Definition From

RAID 0 vs. RAID 5, JBOD and SSDs

RAID 5 is a commonly used version of RAID. It can be combined with RAID 0 or used as an alternative. RAID 5 can provide more economical redundancy and stripes data across drives while distributing parity. It provides more usable storage than RAID 1. Also, the drives are hot-swappable so a failed drive can be easily replaced with another drive to minimize data losses.

However, RAID 5 has the disadvantage of reduced performance during rebuilds. Also, RAID 5 does not offer the same high capacities as RAID 0 or the same high speeds as RAID 1 since it creates parity bits and uses processing power to create the bits and storage space to store them.

Outside of other RAID levels, alternatives to disk striping can include JBOD (just a bunch of disks) and SSDs. Like RAID 0, JBOD is composed of multiple physical drives. While the drives in RAID arrays need to be of similar capacity, those in JBOD arrays can vary.

Like RAID 0, a JBOD array uses all available storage capacity, not reserving any for redundancy. This makes a JBOD array a cost-effective alternative to many RAID arrays. However, JBOD arrays don't come close to the speed of RAID with reads and writes, especially not the accelerated reads and writes of RAID 0.

SSDs are growing in popularity as prices go down, thanks to their rapid speeds and increasing capacities. Of all the RAID levels, RAID 0 comes the closest to the read and write speeds of SSDs. However, RAID 0 cannot exactly match the speed and performance provided by an SSD. Also, RAID controller throughput and general processing speeds are limited in RAID 0.

That said, SSDs are still more expensive than an economical RAID array. This is why the choice of drive types may ultimately come down to determining the priority between speed requirements, performance requirements and costs.

RAID protects data and improves storage performance and availability. The technology can be confusing, however. Read about the different levels of RAID, the pros and cons, and where they work best. Also, explore the key differences in software RAID vs. hardware RAID.