Best fit
RAID 5
Arrays where one-drive tolerance and higher usable capacity fit the risk and recovery plan.
- • Single-drive fault tolerance.
- • Rebuild and workload constraints still matter.
- • Needs an independent backup path.
Redundancy choice
RAID 5 or RAID 6?
Compare single and dual parity by usable capacity, fault tolerance, drive count, and what a degraded array means for your data.
Best fit
RAID 6
Larger or more important arrays where the capacity cost of dual parity is acceptable.
- • Uses an additional drive worth of capacity.
- • Requires enough bays to remain capacity-efficient.
- • Does not protect against deletion or site loss.
Decision rule
Compare both results using the same drive size, planning horizon, and backup plan. The meaningful question is whether the extra fault tolerance is worth the capacity and bay cost in your situation.
Editorial record
Maintained by Make Your Own Tools to turn “Store data safely” into a defined capacity, bays, redundancy, and recovery baseline. The references below provide the technical context for this planning path. Its calculation rules and planning assumptions are documented in the methodology, and affected calculations pass regression checks before the review date advances.
- Last reviewed
- Evidence set
- 2 primary references
- Planning scope
- Equal-size drive capacity and redundancy planning.
- Next check
- Controller-specific rebuild behavior or a replacement for backup.