What are the benefits RAID 0 Stripe?

RAID 0 (also known as a stripe set or striped volume) splits data evenly across two or more disks. Since RAID 0 provides no fault tolerance or redundancy, the failure of one drive will cause the entire array to fail. RAID 0 is normally used to increase performance, although it can also be used as a way to create a large logical volume out of two or more physical disks.

RAID 0 comprises striping. This level provides no data redundancy but improves performance through parallelism of read and write operations across multiple drives. RAID 0 has no error detection mechanism, so the failure of one disk causes the loss of all data on the array. Generally you could almost double the speed of read & write operations using RAID 0, but this has almost become obsolete with the introduction of SSD (Solid State Disk) drives which run at 3 or 4 times faster that the standard Hard Disk Drive.

Below are the results from using CrystalDiskMark 5.1.2 x64 on various numbers of Seagate 2Terrabyte drives.

The first test involve just a single drive in AHCI mode, the 2nd test used 2 drives in RAID 0, the third test used 4 drives in RAID 0 and the final test was 6 drives in RAID 0.

 

SEAGATE 2 Terrabyte x 1

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 207.265 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 203.518 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.634 MB/s [ 398.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1.424 MB/s [ 347.7 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 207.198 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 204.015 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.652 MB/s [ 159.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.443 MB/s [ 352.3 IOPS]

 

SEAGATE 2 Terrabyte x 2 in RAID 0

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 385.753 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 377.895 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 3.448 MB/s [ 841.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 2.944 MB/s [ 718.8 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 380.967 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 376.701 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.480 MB/s [ 361.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 3.012 MB/s [ 735.4 IOPS]

 

SEAGATE 2 Terrabyte x 4 in RAID 0

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 763.051 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 725.576 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 6.204 MB/s [ 1514.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 5.095 MB/s [ 1243.9 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 741.727 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 697.837 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.556 MB/s [ 379.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 5.336 MB/s [ 1302.7 IOPS]

 

SEAGATE 2 Terrabyte x 6 in RAID 0

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1099.841 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 971.582 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 8.606 MB/s [ 2101.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 8.089 MB/s [ 1974.9 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 1114.653 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 896.850 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 1.528 MB/s [ 373.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 7.072 MB/s [ 1726.6 IOPS]

As you can clearly see from the above test results, the speed benefits of RAID 0 are quite beneficial.

As a result, RAID 0 is primarily used in applications that require high performance and are able to tolerate lower reliability.