Manage RAID
RAID stands for redundant array of independent disks. RAID contains the word array, and the two terms are
often used interchangably. An array is a combination of two or more physical disks that are presented to the
operating system as a single volume.
Disks are combined into different RAID configurations known as RAID levels. The RAID level you choose
depends on which storage attributes are most important to you:
Capacity The total amount of data you can store.
Performance The speed at which data is copied.
Protection The number of disks that can fail before data is lost.
Your LaCie 2big RAID can be configured as RAID 0 or RAID 1. Each RAID level has its own advantages:
RAID 0—Data is not duplicated on both hard drives in RAID 0. This results in faster transfers and more
storage, since the full capacity of both drives can be used to store unique data. However, RAID 0 lacks a very
important feature: data protection. If a hard drive fails, all data in the array is lost.
RAID 1—RAID 1 provides greater safety since data is duplicated on each disk in the array. If a single disk fails,
the data remains available on the other disk. However, this comes at a cost—since the same data is written
to each drive, copying data takes longer and overall storage capacity is reduced by 50%. RAID 1 is a good
choice when safety is more important than speed or disk space.
To summarize, each RAID level has its own advantages:
RAID level Capacity Protection Speed Factory default
RAID 0 100% None Excellent Yes
RAID 1 50% Excellent Good No
RAID setup as part of a new Toolkit installaon
You can quickly configure the initial RAID level and formatting for 2big RAID as part of a new Toolkit
installation.
