Introduction to RAID : RAID Levels : RAID 0

RAID 0

RAID 0 provides disk striping across all drives in the RAID drive group. RAID 0 does not provide any data redundancy, but RAID 0 offers the best performance of any RAID level. RAID 0 breaks up data into smaller segments, and then stripes the data segments across each drive in the drive group. The size of each data segment is determined by the stripe size. RAID 0 offers high bandwidth.

*NOTE  RAID level 0 is not fault tolerant. If any drive in a RAID 0 drive group fails, the entire virtual drive (all drives associated with the virtual drive) fails.

By breaking up a large file into smaller segments, the Nytro MegaRAID controller can use both SAS drives and SATA drives to read or write the file faster. RAID 0 involves no parity calculations to complicate the write operation. This situation makes RAID 0 ideal for applications that require high bandwidth but do not require fault tolerance. The following table provides an overview of RAID 0. The following figure provides a graphic example of a RAID 0 drive group.

Table 7. RAID 0 Overview

Uses

Provides high data throughput, especially for large files. Any environment that does not require fault tolerance.

Strong points

Provides increased data throughput for large files.

No capacity loss penalty for parity.

Weak points

Does not provide fault tolerance or high bandwidth.

All data is lost if any drive fails.

Drives

1 to 32

Figure 11. RAID 0 Drive Group Example with Two Drives