Short for Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive).\r\nThere are number of different RAID levels. The three most common are 0, 3, and 5:
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\r\nLevel 0: Provides data striping (spreading out blocks of each file across multiple disks) but no redundancy. This improves performance but does not deliver fault tolerance.
\r\nLevel 1: Provides disk mirroring.
\r\nLevel 3: Same as Level 0, but also reserves one dedicated disk for error correction data. It provides good performance and some level of fault tolerance.
\r\nLevel 5: Provides data striping at the byte level and also stripe error correction information. This results in excellent performance and good fault tolerance.