CompTIA A+ Core 1 (220-1201)HardwareHard
A technician is configuring a home media server that requires high-capacity, redundant storage. The client wants to be able to recover data if any single drive fails without losing any data. They have four 8TB hard drives available. Which RAID level would meet these requirements while maximizing usable storage capacity?
- ARAID 5
- BRAID 10
- CRAID 0
- DRAID 1
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: A. RAID 5
RAID 5 offers single-drive fault tolerance (data recovery if any one drive fails) and maximizes usable capacity by distributing parity information across all drives. With four 8TB drives, RAID 5 would provide 3 x 8TB = 24TB of usable storage.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. RAID 10 (or 1+0) provides excellent fault tolerance (up to N/2 drives, if they are from different mirrored sets) but uses only half the total capacity (2 x 8TB mirrored pairs = 16TB usable), which is less than RAID 5 in this scenario.
- C. RAID 0 provides no fault tolerance; data is lost if any drive fails.
- D. RAID 1 (mirroring) provides fault tolerance but only uses half the total capacity (8TB from two 8TB drives, or 16TB from four, but mirroring pairs). With four 8TB drives, it would be 16TB usable, less than RAID 5.
RAID Levels for Redundancy
Different configurations of multiple hard drives to improve performance, provide redundancy, or both, with varying trade-offs.
- RAID 0: Striping, no redundancy.
- RAID 1: Mirroring, 50% capacity loss.
- RAID 5: Striping with parity, single drive fault tolerance, N-1 capacity.
- RAID 10: Striping and mirroring, N/2 capacity, high fault tolerance.
Memory trick: Redundancy and Capacity: Choose wisely for your data's destiny.