SAFEStor User Guide
Page 4
RAID 5
In RAID 5, the parity information is written to all of the drives in the array rather than being
concentrated on a dedicated parity disk. If one drive in the array fails, the parity information can
be used to reconstruct the missing data from that drive. All drives in the array can read and write
data at the same time, greatly increasing the performance of the RAID system.
RAID 6
RAID 6 extends a RAID 5 array by using dual distributed parity. Data and parity is striped at
block level across all member drives, just like in RAID 5. However, two sets of parity are
calculated and written across all the drives. When a disk fails, the data is recovered from the
remaining disks. RAID 6 provides the ultimate level of fault tolerance and can sustain two
simultaneous drive failures without downtime or data loss.
RAID 6 offers a perfect solution for mission-critical data.