Windows 7 / Getting Started

Creating a RAID-5 Volume

A RAID-5 volume is similar to a striped volume in that data is written in 64-KB stripes across all disks in the volume. However, this volume adds a parity stripe to one of the disks in the array, thereby providing fault tolerance. The parity stripe rotates from one disk to the next as each set of stripes is written. The RAID-5 volume offers improved read performance because data is read from each disk at the same time; however, write performance is lower because processor time is required to calculate the parity stripes. You cannot house the system or boot volumes on a RAID-5 volume.

Creating a RAID-5 volume is also similar; remember that you must have at least three disks to create this type of volume. Select New RAID-5 Volume from the right-click options and follow the steps presented by the New RAID-5 VolumeWizard.

NOTE For more information on how RAID-5 volumes function, refer to "RAID-5 Volumes" at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc938485.aspx.

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In this tutorial:

  1. Windows Disk Management
  2. Managing Disks and Volumes
  3. Basic and Dynamic Disks
  4. Working with Basic Disks
  5. Converting Basic Disks to Dynamic
  6. Working with Dynamic Disks
  7. Troubleshooting Disk Problems
  8. Managing File System Fragmentation
  9. The Defrag.exe Command-Line Tool
  10. RAID Volumes
  11. Creating a RAID-0 Volume
  12. Creating a Spanned Volume
  13. Creating a RAID-5 Volume
  14. Using DiskPart to Create Striped, Mirrored, and RAID-5 Volumes
  15. Managing and Troubleshooting RAID Volumes
  16. Configuring Removable Drive Policies