What Is RAID?
RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is a technology that allows computer users to achieve high levels of storage reliability from low-cost and less reliable PC-class disk-drive components, via the technique of arranging the devices into arrays for redundancy.
"RAID" is now used as an umbrella term for computer data storage schemes that can divide and replicate data among multiple hard disk drives. When multiple physical disks are set up to use RAID technology, they are said to be in a RAID array. This array distributes data across multiple disks, but the array is recognized by the computer user and operating system as one single disk.
RAID is used either to improve reliability and availability of data, ensuring that important data is available more often than not, or merely to improve the access speed to files. There're several levels of RAID according to various combinations of approaches giving different trade-offs of protection against data loss, capacity, and speed, including RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 2, RAID 3, RAID 4, RAID5 and RAID 10 (1+0), etc. Among them, RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 5 are the most commonly found, and cover most requirements.
What Is RAID 5?
A RAID 5 uses block-level striping with parity data distributed across all member disks. RAID 5 has achieved popularity due to its low cost of redundancy. This can be seen by comparing the number of drives needed to achieve a given capacity. RAID 1 or RAID 10, which yields redundancy, gives only S / 2 storage capacities, where S is the sum of the capacities of N drives used. In RAID 5, the yield is S x (N-1) / N.
As an example, four 1TB drives can be made into a 2 TB redundant array under RAID 1 or RAID 10, but the same four drives can be used to build a 3 TB array under RAID 5. Although RAID 5 is commonly implemented in a disk controller, some with hardware support for parity calculations (hardware RAID cards) and some using the main system processor (motherboard based RAID controllers), it can also be done at the Operating System level. A minimum of three disks is required for a complete RAID 5 configuration. In some implementations a degraded RAID 5 disk set can be made (three disk set of which only two are online), while supports a fully-functional (non-degraded) RAID 5 setup with two disks - which function as a slow RAID1, but can be expanded with further volumes.
What is the easiest and safest solution to repartition RAID 5?
As mentioned above, due to its low cost of redundancy, RAID 5 is popular among Windows Server users. And repartitioning RAID 5 is a regular task for IT administrators to maximize the performance of their Windows Server computers. Since Windows Servers usually store the most important data of a company, IT administrators should be extremely careful when choosing software to work on their server computer, including partition software to repartition their RAID 5.
Partition Wizard Server Edition is a professional partition manager that can work perfectly well with hardware RAID, especially for RAID5.
How to repartition RAID 5 without data Loss with this partition manager?
Partition Wizard Server Edition is Compatible with all types of hardware RAID (e.g. RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 5) on both Windows Server 2000/2003/2008 and desktop 2000/XP/Vista 32 and 64 bit systems. It also provide a range of powerful functions to repartition RAID, especially RAID 5, including: Resize and Move partitions, Copy partition, Copy disk, Create and Delete partitions, Format partitions, Convert partitions, Explore partitions, set active partition, etc.
Among these functions, Partition Copy Wizard and Disk Copy Wizard offer you an easy way to back up your valuable data before any operations on your RAID 5 partition. Resize utility allows you to resize your RAID 5 without any data loss.
Below is the user-friendly interface of Partition Wizard Server Edition:
More about Partition Wizard Server Edition
Partition Wizard Server Edition is the best choice for server partition management. With MiniTool Partition Manager you can repartition RAID 5 on up to 3 server computers.
If you have more than 3 server computers, you can click to buy Partition Wizard Enterprise Edition, which allows unlimited licenses with just one copy.
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