Which RAID level stripes data across multiple drives with parity distributed among the drives (not a dedicated parity drive)?

Which RAID level stripes data across multiple drives with parity distributed among the drives (not a dedicated parity drive)?

• A. RAID Level 3
• B. RAID Level 0
• C. RAID Level 5
• D. RAID Level 1

Answer: (C)

Distributing parity across all drives while striping data across them provides fault tolerance without dedicating one disk to parity. In this setup, parity information is spread among the disks in each stripe, so if any single drive fails, the missing data can be reconstructed from the remaining data and the parity on the other drives. This lets you lose one disk and still access your data, while using the combined capacity of all the drives (no single drive is holding all the parity). You typically need at least three drives for this arrangement, and while reads are fast due to striping, writes incur parity calculations that add some overhead. By contrast, a configuration with a dedicated parity drive stores all parity on one disk, and a pure striped setup with no parity has no fault tolerance. This description matches RAID 5.

Distributing parity across all drives while striping data across them provides fault tolerance without dedicating one disk to parity. In this setup, parity information is spread among the disks in each stripe, so if any single drive fails, the missing data can be reconstructed from the remaining data and the parity on the other drives. This lets you lose one disk and still access your data, while using the combined capacity of all the drives (no single drive is holding all the parity). You typically need at least three drives for this arrangement, and while reads are fast due to striping, writes incur parity calculations that add some overhead. By contrast, a configuration with a dedicated parity drive stores all parity on one disk, and a pure striped setup with no parity has no fault tolerance. This description matches RAID 5.