Which configuration provides redundancy and enhances performance in disk storage?

RAID 5 is known for providing both redundancy and enhanced performance in disk storage. This configuration utilizes a technique called striping, where data and parity information are spread across three or more disks. Each stripe of data has an associated parity block, which provides redundancy; if one disk fails, the data can still be reconstructed using the parity information stored on the remaining disks.

The performance aspect comes from the way data is read and written. When data is written to a RAID 5 array, it is distributed across multiple disks, allowing simultaneous read and write operations, which can improve performance compared to single-disk systems. Additionally, during read operations, data can be accessed from multiple disks at once, further enhancing performance.

In contrast, other RAID configurations focus either on redundancy without striping, such as RAID 1, where data is mirrored on two disks, which does not enhance performance as significantly. RAID 0 provides performance improvements through striping but lacks any redundancy, meaning if one disk fails, all data is lost. RAID 6 offers increased redundancy compared to RAID 5 by allowing for the failure of two disks but may present a performance trade-off due to the additional parity calculations required.

Thus, RAID 5 stands out as a balanced approach,