RAID 10 — RAID 1+0 (Stripe of Mirrors)
Definition
A RAID configuration that combines RAID 1 mirroring with RAID 0 striping — data is mirrored across pairs of disks, and these mirror pairs are striped together.
Context & Usage
RAID 10 provides the best random-write performance of any common RAID level, because writes do not require parity calculation. The trade-off is 50% capacity overhead (every byte is stored twice). Survives multiple drive failures as long as no two failures occur within the same mirror pair. Typical use cases: OLTP databases, VM datastores, virtualization hosts with many small writes.
Examples
- 8-drive RAID 10 = 4 drives of capacity, survives up to 4 failures
- SQL Server transaction log on RAID 10 for write performance
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