RAID: explained

RAID stands for "Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks", and is a computer storage system that involves combining a number of small capacity (small amount of storage) hard drives, into an array, with better performance results than a single large capacity hard drive. There are 5 different 'redundant' levels of RAID (RAID-1 to RAID-5) configuration, each with varying features and performance, as well as an additional 'non-redundant' RAID-0 configuration. The process of "striping" involves a chunk of …

…four times the amount of data can be read/written to/from the RAID than a single drive. This system of storage is much cheaper than a single drive that would yield the same capacity and performance. RAID storage in a server environment, or any other with high disk usage (such as multimedia development) would greatly increase performance and data integrity, by lowering the time taken to access/write data to and from the system.