User Manual

Table Of Contents
Software ROMB User Manual
100
RAID 5 – Block Striping with Distributed Parity
RAID 5 organizes block data and parity data across the physical drives.
Generally, RAID Level 5 tends to exhibit lower random write performance due to
the heavy workload of parity recalculation for each I/O. RAID 5 is generally
considered to be the most versatile RAID level. It works well for file, database,
application and web servers.
Figure 3. RAID 5 Stripes all drives with data and parity information
The capacity of a RAID 5 logical drive is the smallest physical drive size
multiplied by the number of physical drives, less one. Hence, a RAID 5 logical
drive with four 100 GB physical drives will have a capacity of 300 GB. A logical
drive with two 120 GB physical drives and one 100 GB physical drive will have a
capacity of 200 GB.
RAID 5 is generally considered to be the most versatile RAID level.
A RAID 5 logical drive requires 3 to 6 physical drives.
Data
Blocks
Distributed Parity
Physical Drives