What is the key operational difference between RAID 5 with a hot spare and RAID 6?

The key operational difference between RAID 5 with a hot spare and RAID 6 lies in the level of fault tolerance each configuration provides. RAID 6 can recover from two simultaneous disk failures, making it more resilient compared to RAID 5, which can only tolerate a single disk failure before data loss occurs. This characteristic of RAID 6 is crucial in environments where data integrity is essential and where the risk of multiple disk failures is a concern.

RAID 6 achieves this additional level of protection by using dual parity data, allowing it to reconstruct the data even if two drives fail at the same time. In contrast, while RAID 5 can offer good performance and some redundancy through single parity, it does not have the same capability to handle multiple drive failures concurrently. Thus, choosing RAID 6 over RAID 5 with a hot spare is particularly advantageous for mission-critical systems requiring enhanced data protection.