What is RAID 0?
Also known as: Striping
A data storage method that splits data across two or more disks in stripes to improve read and write performance, but provides no fault tolerance.
RAID 0, also known as striping, is a standard RAID level defined in the industry that combines two or more physical disk drives into a single logical unit. Data is broken into blocks and distributed evenly across all disks in the array. Because the system can read from or write to multiple disks simultaneously, RAID 0 offers higher throughput and lower latency than a single disk, especially for large sequential transfers and multi-threaded workloads.
The striping process does not generate or store any parity or redundant copies of data. If a single drive in the array fails, every file is affected because the complete data set is spread across all drives. The logical volume becomes unreadable and all data is typically unrecoverable. The total usable capacity is the sum of the capacities of all drives in the array, with no overhead for redundancy.
RAID 0 sits at the lowest rung of the common RAID hierarchy in terms of reliability. It is often used in applications where speed is critical and data loss is acceptable, such as temporary scratch disks, video editing workspaces, or gaming storage. It can be implemented via hardware RAID controllers, motherboard firmware, or software RAID (e.g., mdadm on Linux, Storage Spaces in Windows). Without redundancy, RAID 0 requires a separate backup strategy for any valuable data.
Key facts
- Data is striped across all disks in fixed-size blocks, usually 4 KB to 1 MB. No parity or mirroring is written.
- The failure of one disk causes total data loss on the entire array. No recovery is possible from the RAID set alone.
- Minimum number of disks required is 2. Maximum is typically limited by the controller or operating system.
- Read and write performance scales approximately linearly with the number of disks under ideal conditions.
- Usable capacity equals the sum of all disk capacities. There is no storage overhead for redundancy.
How it works in practice
Related terms
References
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