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RAID Levels Cheat Sheet
RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10 comparison with fault tolerance and capacity
| Level | Name | Min Disks | Fault Tolerance | Capacity | Use Case | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RAID 0 | Striping | 2 | 0 | 100% | Performance, temp data | No redundancy - one disk fails, all data lost |
| RAID 1 | Mirroring | 2 | 1 | 50% | OS drives, critical data | Full copy on each disk |
| RAID 5 | Striping + Parity | 3 | 1 | 67-94% | File servers, NAS | Distributed parity, good balance |
| RAID 6 | Double Parity | 4 | 2 | 50-88% | Large arrays, archives | Survives 2 disk failures |
| RAID 10 | Mirrored Stripes | 4 | 1 | 50% | Databases, VMs | RAID 1+0, best performance + redundancy |
| RAID 01 | Striped Mirrors | 4 | 1 | 50% | Not recommended | RAID 0+1, worse than RAID 10 |
| RAID 50 | Striped RAID 5 | 6 | 1 | 67-94% | Large databases | RAID 5 sets striped together |
| RAID 60 | Striped RAID 6 | 8 | 2 | 50-88% | Enterprise storage | RAID 6 sets striped together |
| JBOD | Just Bunch of Disks | 1 | 0 | 100% | Capacity pooling | No redundancy, spans disks |
RAID 0
Fast, no redundancy
RAID 5
Best balance
RAID 10
Best performance + redundancy