| RAID 6 |
RAID 5 |
| In complex arrays (12-24 drives), RAID 6 applications would be a preferred choice due to the fact that Serial ATA drives used in the arrays have a lower duty cycle and may be more likely to fail in 24/7 or business-critical applications. |
In small arrays (4-12 drives), RAID 5 applications can quickly repair a failed drive and restore lost data—without taking down the array. It's perhaps the most cost-effective, fault-tolerant data protection solution currently available for small storage devices. |
| Pro |
Pro |
- Designed for tolerating two simultaneous HDD failures by storing two sets of distributed parities.
|
- Simplified hardware implementation
- A matured industry standard
|
| Con |
Con |
-
For RAID 6, one needs a more complex system with a method for encoding, as well as XOR calculations. For that, one really needs hardware acceleration, otherwise the performance suffers.
-
Uses 2 drives for parity
|
- The risk of simultaneous drive failures grows in proportion to the drive array and can increase if customers purchase all of the disks in an enclosure at one time.
- If the system finds a faulty sector on another drive during this degraded state (one drive down, spare drive being rebuilt), the RAID 5 system would be unable to restore the data onto the spare drive, resulting in data loss.
|
Recommended Configuration |
Recommended Configuration |
- Disk array consists of 12 disks or more
|
- Disk array consists of 10 disks or less
|
Recommended Solutions |
Recommended Solutions |
- Desktop: EnhanceRAID 12, 15
- Rackmount: UltraStor 16
|
- Desktop: EnhanceRAID 5,6,8,10
- Rackmount: UltraStor 8 or RS2080
|
