2007-05-03 01:46:11 · 4 answers · asked by Anonymous in Computers & Internet ➔ Hardware ➔ Add-ons
First if you don't know what it does are you sure you even need it?...Seriously though a RAID card is a redundant file writing system. Other words it is an automatic system backup.
2007-05-03 01:59:36 · answer #1 · answered by scarlet 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
RAID - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. I know, it does not sound right, but that is what it stands for. Redundnacy is the keyword here. First deinfe the model and brand of the machine. Certain machines will not take RAID cars. Second define why you need RAID, and the benefits of having one.
Your basic types are :
Mirror - Exact copies of each hard disk running at the same time. Write slower, read faster. One drive fails, machine cominues running.
Stripe w/o parity - Two or more drives that contain data as if it was 1 hard disk. Great read and write time. No redundancy.
Strip with parity - Three or more drives, that contain data from each others drive. Good read and write. Full redundancy.
Each RAID levels are based of these guidelines.
Find the model and brand, and work from there.
eg.
If this is a DEll Server, I would call Dell for support on what PERC you want.
2007-05-03 09:19:24 · answer #2 · answered by Matt H 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
As stated above RAID is a way of striping your data across multiple disks. Some of the RAID techniques are merely for speeding up data access but two - Mirroring - using 2 identical disks that are exact duplicates and RAID 5 which uses anything from 3 disks upwards - (normally 5 to 10) will enable you to recover data if a single drive breaks down.
Striping is a techniques for storing parts of data across multiple disks. RAID 5 incorporates a parity bit which enables the volume (group of disks) to be rebuilt if one is lost.
2007-05-03 14:28:10 · answer #3 · answered by Steven 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
RAID:
Redundant Array of Inexpensive (hard) Drives.
Essentially writes the same data to two (or more) different hard drives. Any single hard drive can fail, but you still have a working system.
The weak spot is local catastrophe: A fire, earthquake, etc. may take *all* the hard drives, and if you do not have back-up elsewhere, you are stuck.
If you have reliable internet/network, you may wish to consider CooLocation, distributed files, etc.
2007-05-03 09:11:10 · answer #4 · answered by A Guy 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋