
There is a big difference: a consumer drive is not designed for the demands of being connected into a group of drives and is not suitable for RAID. Some are designated as “desktop” or “consumer” drives, and others as “RAID” or “enterprise” drives.

Storage manufacturers offer many models of drives.

Given its performance benefits and flexibility, hardware RAID is better suited for the typical modern server system. The OS treats the drive like any other drive in the computer - it does not know the difference between a single drive connected to a motherboard or a RAID array being presented by the RAID controller. In both cases, the RAID system combines the individual drives into one logical disk. In hardware RAID, a RAID controller has a processor, memory and multiple drive connectors that allow drives to be attached either directly to the controller, or placed in hot-swap backplanes.
#Softraid 5 vs driver#
The RAID becomes active as soon as the OS has loaded the RAID driver software. This type of RAID uses drives attached to the computer system via a built-in I/O interface or a processorless host bus adapter (HBA).
#Softraid 5 vs software#
In software RAID, the RAID implementation is an application running on the host. » Lower RAID performance as CPU also powers the OS and applications. » Lower cost due to lack of RAID-dedicated hardware. Software RAID runs entirely on the CPU of the host computer system. » Controller cards can be easily swapped out for replacement and upgrades. The server CPU is not loaded with storage workload so it can concentrate on handling the software requirements of the server operating system and applications. The controller handles all RAID functions in its own hardware processor and memory. Hardware RAID resides on a PCIe controller card, or on a motherboardintegrated RAID-on-Chip (ROC). RAID can be hardware-based or software-based. The RAID controller handles the combining of drives into these different configurations to maximize performance, capacity, redundancy (safety) and cost to suit the user needs. It is possible to configure these RAID levels into combination levels - called RAID 10, 50 and 60. When a failed drive is replaced, the lost data is rebuilt from the remaining drives. Parity (RAID 5 & 6) provides fault tolerance by examining the data on two drives and storing the results on a third.Mirroring (RAID 1) replicates data on two drives, preventing loss of data in the event of a drive failure.


This white paper discusses the various types of RAID configurations available, their uses, and how they should be implemented into data servers. Both are necessary to ensure your data is secure. There are two common practices for protecting that data: backups (protecting your data against total system failure, viruses, corruption, etc.), and RAID (protecting your data against drive failure). Choosing the Right RAID Configurations - Which RAID Level is Right for you?įor any organization, whether it be small business or a data center, lost data means lost business.
