Raid Disk Space Utilization Calculator

Raid 0
Stripe
Raid 1
min 2
Raid 5
min 3
Raid 6
min 4
Raid 10
min 4
Raid 50
min 6
Raid 60
min 8
TB
Switch Unit
Switch To SSD
0
0
0
  • Usable: 0 TB or 0 GB
  • Protection: 0 TB or 0 GB
  • Unusable: 0 TB or 0 GB
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Selected: 0
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Raid 0
Stripe
Raid 1
min 2
Raid 5
min 3
Raid 6
min 4
Raid 10
min 4
Raid 50
min 6
Raid 60
min 8
TB
Switch To HDD
0
0
0
  • Usable: 0 TB or 0 GB
  • Protection: 0 TB or 0 GB
  • Unusable: 0 TB or 0 GB
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Selected: 0
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RAID 0 (STRIPE)
  • Minimum drives required: 2
  • Performance: High
  • Redundancy: Low
  • Efficiency: High
  • ADVANTAGES:
  • High performance
  • Easy to implement
  • Highly efficient (no parity overhead)
  • DISADVANTAGES:
  • No redundancy
  • Limited business use cases due to no fault tolerance
RAID 1 (MIRROR)
  • Minimum drives required: 2
  • Performance: Average
  • Redundancy: High
  • Efficiency: Low
  • ADVANTAGES:
  • Fault tolerant
  • Easy to recover data in case of drive failure
  • Easy to implement
  • DISADVANTAGES:
  • Highly inefficient (100% parity overhead)
  • Not scalable (becomes very costly as number of disks increase)
RAID 5 (DRIVES WITH PARITY)
  • Minimum drives required: 3
  • Performance: Average
  • Redundancy: High
  • Efficiency: High
  • ADVANTAGES:
  • Fault tolerant
  • High efficiency
  • DISADVANTAGES:
  • Disk failure has a medium impact on throughput
  • Complex controller design
RAID 6 (DRIVES WITH DOUBLE PARITY)
  • Minimum drives required: 4
  • Performance: Average
  • Redundancy: High
  • Efficiency: High
  • ADVANTAGES:
  • Fault tolerant - increased redundancy over RAID 5
  • High efficiency
  • Remains a great option in multi-user environments which are not write performance sensitive
  • DISADVANTAGES:
  • Write performance penalty over RAID 5
  • More expensive than RAID 5
  • Disk failure has a medium impact on throughput
  • Complex controller design
RAID 10 (MIRROR + STRIPE)
  • Minimum drives required: 4
  • Performance: Very High
  • Redundancy: Very High
  • Efficiency: Low
  • ADVANTAGES:
  • Extremely high fault tolerance (under certain circumstances, RAID 10 array can sustain multiple simultaneous drive failures)
  • Very high performance
  • Faster rebuild performance than 0+1
  • DISADVANTAGES:
  • Very Expensive
  • High Overhead
  • Limited scalability
RAID 50 (PARITY + STRIPE)
  • Minimum drives required: 6
  • Performance: High
  • Redundancy: High
  • Efficiency: Average
  • ADVANTAGES:
  • Higher fault tolerance, better performance and higher efficiency than RAID 5
  • DISADVANTAGES:
  • Very Expensive
  • High Overhead
  • Limited scalability
RAID 60 (DOUBLE PARITY + STRIPE)
  • Minimum drives required: 8
  • Performance: High
  • Redundancy: High
  • Efficiency: Average
  • ADVANTAGES:
  • Higher fault tolerance than RAID 6
  • Higher performance than RAID 6
  • Higher efficiency than RAID 6
  • DISADVANTAGES:
  • Very Expensive
  • Very complex / difficult to implement

About Raid Disk Space Utilization Calculator:

Do you need assistance in RAID planning? Calculates the usable space, space required for data protection, and unused space for different RAID levels. The tool quickly finds out the functional capacity for a given configuration. The device will help you calculate the chances for data loss in a given number of disks in different RAID levels.

What is RAID?


RAID is an acronym; stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks or Redundant Array of Independent Disks. That means RAID is a logical way of putting the several disks together in an array. The idea behind these disks will work together and give the reliability and speed of the expensive disk.

However, the exact speed and reliability you will get from RAID depend upon the type of RAID you are using.

What are the types of RAID?


There are several types of RAID. However, the most used ones are given below.

1 - RAID 0: RAID 0 (striping) is all about performance. It takes the number of disks and merges them into a large volume. An individual file can use the speed and capacity of all the disks of an array. That will significantly increase speeds as you are reading and writing from multiple disks at once.

However, it also comes with a downside. RAID 0 is NOT redundant. The loss of any single disk in an array will cause the loss of entire data.

RAID 0 is an excellent choice where you need maximum performance, and the data exists somewhere else. That RAID type is rarely used in server environments. However, you can use it for caching purposes, where you need fast speed, but data loss or reliability does not matter.

2 - RAID 1: RAID 1 (mirroring) is all about fault tolerance and reliability. RAID 1 is competent in a much more complicated configuration. In that RAID type, you have identical disks. These disks have an exact mirror/copy of the data. The main point of RAID 1 is redundancy. If you lose the data of one disk, you still have all your data on the second disk.

Therefore, if in an event where either disk fails. You can replace the broken one within no time. RAID 1 gives you an extra benefit of increased read performance, as you can read off the data from any of the disks in the array. However, the downside is that you will have a slightly higher write latency. As the data needs to be written on both disks in an array, you will only have the available capacity of a single disk while requiring two disks.

3 - RAID 5 and RAID 6: RAID 5 and RAID 6 take the concept of striping plus distributed parity. The simple difference is that RAID 5 requires the use of a minimum of three disks, where RAID 6 requires the use of a minimum of four disks. It uses the RAID 0 concept to strip the data on multiple disks and maintain redundancy by distributing parity information across all the disks. In short, in RAID 5, if you lose one disk, and in RAID 6, you can still make your data and operations functional if you lose two disks.

However, the main drawback is that if you lose a disk in RAID 5 or RAID 6, you will have to sacrifice the performance to make your data operational seriously. Once you replaced the failed disk, it will need a significant array's performance to rebuild the data from the parity information. That rebuild continues to grow more and more as disks data grow.

4 - RAID 10: RAID 10 uses the concept of mirroring and striping. It's a combination of RAID 1 (mirroring) and RAID 0 (striping). In that RAID type, you require a minimum of four disks to increase speed and redundancy. In four disks configuration, you have two or more sets of mirrored disks striped together. That means RAID 10 allows a total of two disks failures, one per mirrored set.

The RAID 50 and RAID 60 are the combinations of RAID 5 and RAID 6 with striping RAID 0 at a higher level.

How to use the RAID Calculator to determine the usable capacity of RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10, RAID 50, and RAID 60?


The process is simple and involves the following steps.

  • Open the RAID Calculator - RAID Performance Calculator.
  • Select the RAID level from the dropdown. You can select RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6, RAID 10, RAID 50, and RAID 60.
  • After selecting the RAID level, select the disk type. Here, the tools provide you two options. You can either select the "Use HDD" or "Use SDD" tab and select the disks as per your need.
  • If you have disks of different sizes, select the size of the smallest disk.
  • In each RAID level, you require a different number of "minimum disks." Always select that minimum level. Otherwise, the tool will not provide you the needed calculations.
  • After selecting the required disks as per RAID level, the tool automatically provides you "Usable Space," "Space Required For Data Protection," and "Unused Space."