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SK0-004 · Question #166

A technician is installing a server using a two-channel RAID controller, using RAID1 for the first channel and RAID5 for the second channel. If the technician has six 1TB disks total, how will this…

The correct answer is B. Two disks RAID1, four disks RAID5. RAID 1 requires a minimum of 2 disks and RAID 5 requires a minimum of 3 disks, so the only valid allocation of 6 total disks across both channels is 2 for RAID 1 and 4 for RAID 5. Any other split either violates a RAID level's minimum drive count or results in a non-standard…

Server hardware installation and management

Question

A technician is installing a server using a two-channel RAID controller, using RAID1 for the first channel and RAID5 for the second channel. If the technician has six 1TB disks total, how will this configuration look?

Options

  • AOne disk RAID1, five disks RAID5
  • BTwo disks RAID1, four disks RAID5
  • CThree disks RAID1, three disks RAID5
  • DFour disks RAID1, two disks RAID5

How the community answered

(31 responses)
  • A
    13% (4)
  • B
    77% (24)
  • C
    6% (2)
  • D
    3% (1)

Why each option

RAID 1 requires a minimum of 2 disks and RAID 5 requires a minimum of 3 disks, so the only valid allocation of 6 total disks across both channels is 2 for RAID 1 and 4 for RAID 5. Any other split either violates a RAID level's minimum drive count or results in a non-standard configuration.

AOne disk RAID1, five disks RAID5

RAID 1 requires a minimum of 2 drives to create a mirror, so allocating only 1 disk to the RAID 1 channel is technically invalid and cannot form a functional mirrored array.

BTwo disks RAID1, four disks RAID5Correct

RAID 1 (mirroring) requires a minimum of 2 drives per array, and RAID 5 (parity striping) requires a minimum of 3 drives per array. Allocating 2 disks to the RAID 1 channel and 4 disks to the RAID 5 channel uses all 6 available drives while satisfying the minimum requirements for both RAID levels on the two-channel controller. This is the standard, minimum-viable split that correctly fulfills both RAID configurations simultaneously.

CThree disks RAID1, three disks RAID5

While 3 disks can technically satisfy RAID 5's minimum, allocating 3 disks to RAID 1 creates a non-standard 3-way mirror that wastes capacity and is not the conventional minimum configuration for a RAID 1 array.

DFour disks RAID1, two disks RAID5

RAID 5 requires a minimum of 3 drives to perform distributed parity striping, so allocating only 2 disks to the RAID 5 channel makes it impossible to configure a valid RAID 5 array on that controller channel.

Concept tested: RAID 1 and RAID 5 minimum disk allocation split

Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/storage-spaces/storage-spaces-fault-tolerance

Topics

#RAID 1#RAID 5#disk allocation#multi-channel RAID controller

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