Each level or type of RAID data layout has specific performance and redundancy characteristics. These characteristics allow you to custom configure RAID sets to your performance criteria. Understanding the basics of RAID data layout is the first step to purchasing a RAID subsystem that meets today's and tomorrow's storage requirements. Let's get some terminology out of the way. The time it takes to find, recover and start delivering data.
Access time is particularly important to multi-user and database environments.
These environments have many many requests to the same data. These requests do not necessarily involve long data transfers. The breaking up of data so that it can be stored across multiple disk drives. Imagine breaking up a 80 Kb file into five 16 Kb pieces. This will be important later when you are actually buying and configuring a RAID subsystem.