Block-level "striping" across 2 or more disks, No parity or mirroring, so no fault tolerance. Read/write performance improved by number of drives in the system.

     Drive0   Drive1   Drive3
    ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐
    │  A1  │ │  A2  │ │  A3  │
    ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤  Capacity(N drives) = N
    │  B1  │ │  B2  │ │  B3  │
    ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤
    │ ...  │ │ ...  │ │ ...  │
    └──────┘ └──────┘ └──────┘

Block-level "mirroring" across 2 or more disks. No parity, data is duplicated in whole. Mirror drives can be read as per RAID 0, improving read performance.

     Drive0   Drive1   Drive3
    ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐
    │  A1  │ │  A1  │ │  A1  │
    ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤  Capacity(N drives) = 1
    │  B1  │ │  B1  │ │  B1  │
    ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤
    │ ...  │ │ ...  │ │ ...  │
    └──────┘ └──────┘ └──────┘

Bit-level striping w/ dedicated hamming code parity. Requires 3 or more drives and can tolerate one drive failure. No longer used.

     Drive0   Drive1   Drive3   Drive4   Drive5   Drive6
    ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐
    │  A1  │ │  A2  │ │  A3  │ │ Ap1  │ │ Ap2  │ │ Ap3  │
    ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤   Capacity(N drives) = (N-p)
    │  B1  │ │  B2  │ │  B3  │ │ Bp1  │ │ Bp2  │ │ Bp3  │
    ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤
    │ ...  │ │ ...  │ │ ...  │ │ ...  │ │ ...  │ │ ...  │
    └──────┘ └──────┘ └──────┘ └──────┘ └──────┘ └──────┘

Byte(3)/Block(4)-level striping w/ dedicated parity. 3+ disks / recovers 1 failure Block-level striping w/ dedicated parity. 3+ disks / recovers 1 failure Neither 3/4 are widely used, replaced by RAID 5.

     Drive0   Drive1   Drive3   Drive4
    ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐
    │  A1  │ │  A2  │ │  A3  │ │  Ap  │
    ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤ Capacity(N drives) = N-1
    │  B1  │ │  B2  │ │  B3  │ │  Bp  │
    ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤
    │ ...  │ │ ...  │ │ ...  │ │ ...  │
    └──────┘ └──────┘ └──────┘ └──────┘

Block-level striping w/ distributed parity. 3+ disks required and can recover from one failure. Both reads and writes can be distributed and fast, but updates require reading all blocks in the stripe, and updating both data and parity.

     Drive0   Drive1   Drive3   Drive4
    ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐
    │  A1  │ │  A2  │ │  A3  │ │  Ap  │
    ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤ Capacity(N drives) = N-1
    │  B1  │ │  B2  │ │  Bp  │ │  B3  │
    ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤
    │  C1  │ │  Cp  │ │  C2  │ │  C3  │
    ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤
    │  Dp  │ │  D1  │ │  D2  │ │  D3  │
    └──────┘ └──────┘ └──────┘ └──────┘

Spreading the parity across disks eliminates the wear that a dedicated parity drive would experience (every update requires updating both the data block and the parity block associated with the stripe.)

Extends RAID 5 by adding an additional parity block, allowing the array to recover from up to two simultaneous failures. 4+ disks are required.

     Drive0   Drive1   Drive3   Drive4   Drive5
    ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐
    │  A1  │ │  A2  │ │  A3  │ │  Ap  │ │  Aq  │
    ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤    Capacity(N drives) = N-2
    │  B1  │ │  B2  │ │  Bp  │ │  Bq  │ │  B3  │
    ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤
    │  C1  │ │  Cp  │ │  Cq  │ │  C2  │ │  C3  │
    ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤ ├──────┤
    │  Dp  │ │  Dq  │ │  D1  │ │  D2  │ │  D3  │
    └──────┘ └──────┘ └──────┘ └──────┘ └──────┘

Creates a second striped set to mirror the primary striped set. Can operate with so long as one side of the mirror has no failures.

      ┌─────── Raid 1 ───────┐
    Raid 0                 Raid 0

Creates a striped set from multiple mirrored sets. Can operate so long as both mirrors remain operational.

      ┌─────── Raid 0 ───────┐
    Raid 1                 Raid 1

A striped (RAID 0) set of multiple RAID 5 arrays.

A striped (RAID 0) set of multiple RAID 6 arrays.