How do raid controllers work

So, when you save information, it will write and store data on that singular drive. The RAID controller will control how the information is distributed amongst the existing drives. The RAID controller is invisible to the operating system and you. If you wished to view the status of your RAID controller, in most cases you will need to install specialized software.

Developers of data storage technologies are working hard to provide more efficient, less energy consuming, safer and higher-capacity data storage devices. It is striped on at least four disks to improve performance and redundant on mirrors. In a four-drive array, the system stripes data to two disks.

The remaining two disks mirror the striped disks and each disk stores half of the data. To sum up, this post mainly introduces some information on the RAID controller include the definition, advantages as well as the different levels. Hence, you will have a comprehensive and deep understanding of the RAID controllers.

By clicking sign up, you agree to receive emails from Techopedia and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. It provides the physical disk drives as logical units to the computer or server managing the RAID infrastructure. A RAID controller typically provides grouped logical disk space to the operating system and other applications. The front-end interface of the RAID controller enables communication with the server host adapter, whereas the back-end interface communicates and manages the underlying disks.

By: Justin Stoltzfus Contributor, Reviewer. By: Satish Balakrishnan. RAID 0 is used to improve hard disk performance at the risk of data loss. If one of the disks in the array fails, all of the data on the other hard drive becomes useless, as it's only a portion of the original data. RAID 1, called "mirroring," duplicates data across both drives, so that if one drive fails, a user can still access the same exact files from the other hard drive.

The configuration stripes and mirrors data, improving disk performance without sacrificing security. RAID 10 is ideal for databases, but the array requires a minimum of four disk drives, which can be costly.