NAS Series - Which RAID should I use?

This article will help you, to decide about the right RAID system to set up on your NAS.

The NAS326 and NAS520 support RAID0, RAID1, JBOD and BASIC. The NAS540 and NAS542 additionally support RAID5, RAID6, and RAID10.

Following we give an overview of the different RAID-types:

• RAID0:
  Splits data evenly across two or more disks. It needs at least two discs. Its advantage is an increased performance while its disadvantage is the lack of redundancy. One defect disk causes all data to be corrupted. 
  
  
• RAID1
  Mirrors a set of data on two or more disks. It needs at least two discs. Its advantage is an increased redundancy while its disadvantage is lower storage capacity. One disk can defect without corrupting the data.
  
  
• RAID5
  Stripes the data with parity. It requires at least three disks. Its advantage is fault tolerance including better performance while its disadvantage is larger parity overhead decreasing performance of large operations. One disk can defect without corrupting the data.
• RAID6 stripes the hard drives with double parity. It requires at least four disks. Its advantage is high fault tolerance including better performance while its disadvantage is larger parity overhead decreasing performance of large operations. Two disks can defect without corrupting the data.
• RAID10 stripes and mirrors the hard drives. It requires at least four disks. Its advantage is very high performance including a fault tolerance while its disadvantage is a lower storage capacity including higher cost. Four Disks are required.
• JBOD puts multiple hard drives as one volume. It requires at least two disks. Its advantage is no loss in disc space while its disadvantage is no fault tolerance.
  
  
• BASIC creates a volume for one disc and has no fault tolerance.

More details on the RAID types can be found in this table:

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