Striping is a software RAID technique that writes data concurrently to multiple separate devices. Consider the following guidelines before creating your RAID 1 device:
A segment is the amount of storage space used from each disk you plan to use in the software RAID device. A software RAID0 device can accommodate 2 to14 segments.
A stripe is the amount of data the file system places on one device before moving to the next device. The stripe size ranges from 4 KB to 256 KB, in increments of 2 KB. The default stripe size is 64 KB.
Each segment in the software RAID0 configuration should come from a different device. You can obtain segments from the same device, but this can severely impede the performance of your file system on the RAID.
It is best to use segments of the same size when you create your RAID device. The size of each segment must be compatible in data area size with other segments you plan to use. The minimum segment size is 100 KB. The maximum size must not be more than 120 MB larger than the size of other partitions. The size the RAID pulls from each segment is equivalent to the size of its smallest member segment.
All member segments in the software RAID0 device must have the same sharable status. Either all are sharable for clustering, or all are not. Set the segment’s disk as Sharable or Not Shareable before you build the RAID.
If one of the member disks fails, all volumes on the RAID device become unavailable. After you replace the disk, you must restore each volume from backup media. Each volume’s data must be restriped across all segments in the RAID before you can use the volume again.
If one of the member disks fails, the entire volume becomes unavailable. Therefore, you should mirror or duplex volumes built on RAID0 devices. To mirror the software RAID0 devices, the devices in the mirror must have no disks in common. This configuration creates a software RAID 10 Traditional volume.