This enables RAID 6 to handle the simultaneous failure of two disks (see the image below). In RAID 6, parity information is spread twice on all the disks (double parity). That’s because it takes the size of one whole disk to store parity. Meanwhile, the data recovery (parity) information will occupy 2 TB. That is the equivalent size of two disks. Therefore, if you have 3 hard disks each having 2 TB capacity, RAID 5 will store your data using 4 TB. This implies that the entire RAID 5 array may fail and the data may be lost. However, if two disks fail in RAID 5, the parity information can’t be used to repair them. Then, the parity information on the other disks is used to restore the data in the new disk. If one disk fails in a RAID 5 setup (array), all you need to do is replace the failed disk with a new disk. The parity information is stored equally on all the disks one per disk (see the image below). In a RAID 5 setup, the different data you store is striped across multiple disks. So, let me explain in detail how the two RAID technologies work. One important fact is that both RAID 5 and RAID 6 are not very easy to configure or understand. Also, unlike RAID 5, RAID 6 stores parity information using the equivalent size of two disks.īy reserving two disks space for parity information, RAID 6 can tolerate two disk failures rather than just one.Īlso, both RAID 5 and RAID 6 can have up to 32 separate disks connected together. In RAID 6, a minimum of four disks are connected in parallel. The equivalent size of one disk will hold the parity information while the remaining space will store your data. In particular, RAID 5 requires a minimum of three hard disks. This helps an organization recover its data in case of a disk failure (or in some cases, multiple disk failures – more on this shortly).

This data recovery information is called “parity information”.Ĭonsequently, RAID 5 and RAID 6 are used as storage for enterprise server machines. To achieve this, one or more disks will be reserved for storing recovery information. Since your data is distributed this way, you can restore them when a disk fails. In a RAID vs RAID 6 setup, the data you store is spread across multiple disks.

Drive snapshot raid 5