PH Ranking - Online Knowledge Base - 2025-09-06

Storage Efficiency and Capacity Trade-offs in RAID 1 and RAID 10

RAID 1 offers complete data mirroring, meaning all data is duplicated exactly on two or more disks. This results in 50% storage efficiency because usable capacity is only the size of one disk in the mirror (e.g., two 1TB drives yield 1TB usable space). It provides excellent data redundancy and fault tolerance, allowing the system to continue operating as long as one disk remains functional. Read performance can improve since reads can be served from either disk, but write performance is generally similar to a single disk because data must be written to both drives.

RAID 10 (also called RAID 1+0) combines mirroring and striping by first creating mirrored pairs (RAID 1) and then striping data across those pairs (RAID 0). This setup offers both high fault tolerance and improved performance. Like RAID 1, RAID 10 has a storage efficiency of about 50%, since half of the total disk capacity is used for mirroring. For example, six 1TB drives in RAID 10 provide about 3TB of usable space. RAID 10 delivers faster read and write speeds compared to RAID 1 alone due to striping, and it can tolerate multiple disk failures as long as no mirrored pair loses all its disks.

Storage Efficiency and Capacity Trade-offs

RAID Level Storage Efficiency Usable Capacity Example (6 x 1TB) Fault Tolerance Performance Characteristics
RAID 1 ~50% 3TB (if 6 disks mirrored in pairs) Can survive failure of one disk per mirrored pair Good read speed (can read from any disk), write speed similar to single disk
RAID 10 ~50% 3TB Can survive failure of one disk in each mirrored pair High read/write speeds due to striping + mirroring

Key Points

  • Both RAID 1 and RAID 10 sacrifice half of the total raw disk capacity for redundancy, resulting in similar storage efficiency (~50%).
  • RAID 10 offers better performance than RAID 1 because it stripes data across mirrored pairs, improving both read and write speeds.
  • RAID 10 provides higher fault tolerance and reliability than RAID 1 alone, as it can sustain multiple disk failures if they occur in different mirrored pairs.
  • RAID 1 is simpler to implement and may be suitable for smaller setups or where only mirroring is needed.
  • RAID 10 is preferred for environments requiring both speed and redundancy but at the cost of higher hardware requirements and complexity.

In summary, RAID 1 and RAID 10 both trade off half of the total disk capacity to achieve redundancy, but RAID 10 enhances performance and fault tolerance by combining mirroring with striping. The choice depends on whether you prioritize simplicity (RAID 1) or a balance of speed and reliability (RAID 10).

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