What's RAID All About?

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. However, some prefer to define RAID as Redundant Array of Independent Disks. In principle, RAID is a technique that allows you to logically turn two or more hard disks into a single, high performance hard disk array. How this is done depends on the RAID level.

Well, there is quite a lot to talk about RAID as a whole. However, I'll try to keep it short and simple, and yet informative enough so that even newbies will be able to understand the concept of RAID as well as how, when and why it can improve the hard disk performance.

Now, there are different kinds of RAID, called RAID levels. Each RAID level has its advantages and disadvantages. The higher the level, the higher the cost. Let me introduce each of the RAID levels to you before I continue.

For an in-depth discussion of these and even more RAID levels, please take a look at The RAID Guide.

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