RAID Level Descriptions

Although the RAID Controller supports a large variety of RAID Levels, RAID 0 or RAID 3 are most commonly used for video and content creation purpose.

RAID Level	Description	Advantage	Disadvantage	Ideal for
0	Striping.	Highest performance.	No disk redundancy, one drive failure will lose all data.	Highest resolution HD, 2K, and maximum multiple streams.
1	Mirroring.	Highest redundancy.	Less cost efficient for redundancy, loses 1/2 disk capacity.	Data protection is paramount, maximum disk failure protection.
3	Striping with a dedicated parity drive.	Efficient drive redundancy, 1 drive used for parity.	Loses 1 disk drive capacity.	Well balanced for video requiring performance and redundancy.
5	Striping the parity across all drives.	Efficient drive redundancy, parity distributed to all drives.	Loses 1 disk drive capacity.	Well balanced for file server requiring performance and redundancy.
6	Striping with two dedicated parity drives.	Double drive redundancy, 2 drives used for parity.	Loses 2 disk drive capacity.	Mission critical.
JBOD	Just a Bunch of disks.	Each drive can be accessed individually from operating system.	No redundancy.	Audio applications.
RAID + Spare	A drive is set aside as an online hot spare.	Automatic rebuild of a failed drive.	Loses another drive capacity. (In addition to the drive(s) needed for the RAID level selected.)	Minimizes degraded RAID level exposure time.