Which of the following types of RAID, if configured with the same number and type of disks, would provide the best write performance?

Question

Options

• ARAID 3
• BRAID 5
• CRAID 6
• DRAID 10

• A
  20% (5)
• B
  12% (3)
• C
  4% (1)
• D
  64% (16)

Explanation

RAID 10 delivers the best write performance because it combines striping (RAID 0) with mirroring (RAID 1), requiring no parity calculations - data is simply written to mirrored disk pairs in parallel. RAID 5 suffers a write penalty because every write triggers a read-modify-write parity update cycle (4 I/O operations per logical write). RAID 6 is even slower, using double distributed parity that doubles that overhead (6 I/O operations per write). RAID 3 uses a dedicated parity disk that becomes a bottleneck on every write since all writes must update the same parity disk.

Memory tip: "Parity = penalty." Any RAID level that calculates parity (3, 5, 6) hurts write speed. RAID 10 skips parity entirely - it just mirrors - so writes are fast. More parity disks (RAID 6 > RAID 5 > RAID 3) = worse write performance.

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