- Excel / Meridian Data Computer Drive User Manual

SECURSTOR ASTRA ES 85
RAID 5 – Block and Parity Stripe
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.
Data
Blocks
Distributed Parity
Disk Driv es
Figure 24: RAID 5, stripes all drives with data and parity information
The capacity of a RAID 5 disk array is the smallest drive size multiplied by the number of drives less one. Hence,
a RAID 5 disk array with four 100 GB hard drives will have a capacity of 300 GB. A disk array with eight 120 GB
hard drives and one 100 GB hard drive will have a capacity of 800 GB.
RAID 5 requires a minimum of three physical drives and a maximum of 16.
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