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I am a newbie in the world of storage and I am having a hard time digesting the physical architecture of some of the RAID levels. I am particularly interested in RAID 10, and 50. I asked the question specifically about RAID 10, because I feel if I understand that, I'll understand the other.

So, I get the definition of RAID 10 - "minimum 4 disks, a striped array whose segments are mirrored". If I've got 4 disks and Disks 1 and 2 are a mirrored pair, and Disks 3 and 4 are a mirrored pair - where does the data get striped?

Thanks.

Hank
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4 Answers4

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In the following A, B, C, D area pieces of data.

RAID 0:

DISK1    DISK2
  A        B

RAID 1:

DISK 1   DISK2
  A        A

RAID 10:

DISK 1   DISK2   DISK3   DISK4
  A        A       B       B

RAID 5: (p is parity, recovery information)

DISK 1   DISK2   DISKn
  A        B       p

RIAD 50: (p and q are parity, it's two of the above side by side...)

DISK 1   DISK2   DISKn   DISK4   DISK5   DISKm
  A        B       p       C       D       q

The Wikipedia RAID article has much more information and pretty pictures.

Chris S
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RAID_10.png

you have 2 raid 1 that go together into a raid 0 - raid 10.

look at this article as well - describes also the benefits etc. about it.

http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7928?hq_e=el&hq_m=1151565&hq_l=4&hq_v=bf05dd41dc

silviud
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  • Thanks, I've read a number of articles, but for whatever reason, that linux-mag article seemed to help penetrate my denseness! – Hank Jan 07 '11 at 14:48
  • I don't recommend it as a teaching aid, but http://www.flickr.com/photos/tirrell/128638167/ is pertinent, and I find it rather funny. – MadHatter Jan 07 '11 at 15:06
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If disks 1 and 2 make a mirror A and disks 2 and 3 make a mirror B then the data would be striped across A and B. There are some good diagrams and articles here and here that help to explain it.

user9517
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The data is striped at Raid0 first. Then that data is duplicated to each disk in the Raid1 array.

Say you have 16 physical disks for your Raid10 setup. This means you have 8 Raid1 arrays inside your Raid10. When you send data it will get split into 8 chunks. And each Raid1 array only needs to process one chunk of data.

cwheeler33
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