RAID 0

Simple definition

RAID 0 combines multiple drives into one logical volume and distributes data across them. This arrangement is called striping. It allows several drives to work in parallel, but stores neither an extra copy nor parity information.

The essential limitation is the absence of redundancy. If a member fails, the whole volume may become unusable. Large capacity and high throughput therefore do not provide data protection.

Technical definition

A RAID controller or software implementation splits writes into stripes and distributes them according to the array layout. Stripe size, drive count, queues and workload affect performance. A sequential copy benchmark does not necessarily predict how a business application will behave.

With two drives of equal capacity, usable raw capacity is approximately their combined capacity, before formatting and metadata. Arrangements involving different drive sizes depend on the implementation.

Practical example

Two 1 TB drives can provide about 2 TB of raw capacity in RAID 0. A file is distributed across the members: there is no mirror drive that can replace a failed member. Installing a replacement drive does not automatically reconstruct the lost blocks.

What is it used for?

Temporary workspaces, reproducible computing data and test environments can justify this choice when losing the volume is acceptable. The recovery plan must account for the time required to recreate the environment and restore any necessary inputs.

RAID 0, RAID 1 and backups

RAID 1 uses mirroring to maintain copies across members; RAID 0 distributes data without redundancy. An independent backup addresses a different requirement: recovering a version after deletion, corruption or a wider incident. These terms are not interchangeable.

Checks and limitations