RAID 5 vs RAID 6 Comparison

RAID 5 vs RAID 6

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Question

Which of the following BEST describes the difference between RAID 5 and RAID 6?

Answers

Explanations

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A. B. C. D.

C.

RAID (redundant array of independent disks) 5 and RAID 6 are both types of RAID levels that offer data redundancy and improved data access speed. However, there are some differences between them.

RAID 5 distributes data and parity information across multiple drives in a way that any one drive can fail without data loss. It uses a dedicated parity drive to store the parity information, which is used to reconstruct data in case of a drive failure. The parity information is spread across all the drives in the array, except for the dedicated parity drive. RAID 5 requires at least three drives and can tolerate one drive failure. However, if more than one drive fails, data can be lost.

RAID 6 is similar to RAID 5 in that it uses distributed parity information to protect data. However, it uses two independent parity calculations instead of one, which allows it to tolerate two drive failures simultaneously. This means that RAID 6 can handle two drive failures at the same time without data loss. RAID 6 requires at least four drives and uses two dedicated parity drives to store the parity information. The parity information is spread across all the drives in the array, including the dedicated parity drives.

Therefore, the correct answer to the question is B. RAID 6 uses two dedicated parity drives, while RAID 5 uses only one.