RAID 1 definition
RAID 1, or mirroring, refers to a method of storing data across two or more hard drives, prioritizing data integrity and redundancy. It's particularly useful where data availability and integrity are crucial, like critical databases or systems with sensitive information.
See also: server mirroring
Benefits of RAID 1:
- Fault tolerance. Some RAID configurations such as RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 6, offer protection against the failure of one or more drives, ensuring data is still accessible in a case of emergency.
- Read speed. Read operations are faster because the system can read data from multiple disks simultaneously.
- Failover. If one disk fails, the system can instantly switch to the working disk, minimizing downtime.
- Simple recovery. If a drive fails, the system can continue to operate using the surviving disk. Replacing the failed disk is straightforward, as the data from the functioning drive can be mirrored to the new one.
Drawbacks of RAID:
- Storage efficiency. Due to mirroring data, you only get half the space in your drive. For example, if you have two 1TB drives in RAID 1, you only get 1TB of usable space.
- Write speed. Write operations can be slightly slower compared to a single drive setup, as data needs to be written to both disks simultaneously.
- Limited redundancy. RAID 1 typically used two or more physical disks and, while it provides redundancy against a single disk failure, it doesn't protect if several disks are affected simultaneously.
- Scalability: RAID 1 is less scalable compared to other configurations because both drives in the mirrored set need to be replaced to add more storage.
