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We rely much on data storage devices such as HDDs, SSDs, and more to store and back up our digital data. Now, with these hard drives, two new data storage technologies – RAID and NAS, are becoming quite popular. They both are a lot different from each and offer a great number of benefits to its user, hence more and more people are now ready to invest in them. However, some confuse RAID with NAS. In this post, we’ve tried to differentiate them both in the simplest way. Let’s start with RAID!
What is RAID?
A Redundant Array of Independent Disks or RAID combines multiple drives into one or more logical units. RAID offers multiple advantages over a single hard drive such as data redundancy, improved performance, or both with higher storage capacity and better data security against drive failure. Several RAID levels you can find. However, the most popular ones include RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60. All the RAID levels are based on three primary data storage mechanisms – Striping, Mirroring, and Parity.
Standard RAID levels
RAID 0 – It is based on the Striping mechanism which splits the information of each file on different drives in the array. It offers superior read/writes performance but no fault tolerance. Hence, if one drive is failed, the whole array will fall.
RAID 1 – It follows the Mirroring mechanism. It stored the complete replica of one drive to another one in the array. It means that this level can survive up to one drive failure since the other one will be keeping the same copy of your entire data.
RAID 5 – It is based on the Parity mechanism that splits the data into drives in the array and stores Parity (a combination of all the drives’ data). The Parity keeps storing on different drives and therefore, there is no dedicated drive that stores data. Over time, every drive can contain some Parity information. This level can also withstand one drive failure.
RAID 6 – Although it also follows the Parity mechanism like RAID 5, it offers dual parity. It means that two drives contain a combination of data from other drives in the array. Therefore, this level can survive up to two drives failures.
Nested RAID levels (RAID 10, 50, and 60)
RAID 10 – It is the combination of RAID 1 and RAID 0; hence can also be called RAID 1+0. This follows the mirroring and striping of both mechanisms to store data. As long as one drive is functional in each mirrored set, this RAID level will be working.
RAID 50 – it combines RAID 5 and RAID 0 (Parity and Striping). Similarly, RAID 5, ensures the survival of one drive failure. Although, more drives can fail and there would be no data loss as long as the drives ate from RAID 5 group.
RAID 60 –Combining RAID 6 and RAID 0, this nested RAID level follows Dual Parity and Striping mechanism. Since RAID 0 group offers no fault tolerance, this RAID level can survive two drives failure just from the RAID 6 group.
So, this was all about RAID. Now, let’s move on to NAS.
What is NAS?
NAS stands for Network Attached Storage. It is quite popular among large and big enterprises. However, considering the advantages it offers, creative professionals and tech enthusiasts are also deploying this technology in small and home offices.
This file-level data storage architecture combines hardware and software to offer easy access and a centralized point to store and share data. Hence, multiple authorized users can access files at the same time. It is the best option to store unstructured data such as documents, spreadsheets, images, videos, and more.
RAID vs NAS – Quick Comparison
It’d be clear by now how different these two storage technologies are. Where RAID is a file-system-based technology, consisting of multiple drives in the array, NAS is network-accessible storage technology. Let’s have a quick overview of the below-mentioned comparison table differentiating RAID and NAS.
RAID Overview
- RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is a data storage virtualization technology, containing multiple drives into one or more logical units.
- Multiple RAID levels are available based on three primary data storage mechanisms – Striping, Mirroring, and Parity. Each level offers a different data storage capacity.
- A RAID can be configured using Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) and Solid-State Drives (SSDs)
- It caters to the purposes of high performance, fault tolerance, reliability, and data security against drive failure.
NAS Overview
- NAS is a file-level centralized data storage technology that allows storing and sharing of unstructured data between networked devices.
- NAS offers enough storage capacity for a local computer; you can always increase the storage by adding more hard disks.
- NAS enclosure may include traditional hard drives and RAID arrays.
- With NAS, you can get data security, high performance, etc. However, with the increasing number of users, LAN may slow down NAS performance.
RAID Vs NAS Recovery
Performing RAID data recovery and NAS data recovery includes two ways – Manual and Automated. Where the manual process is quite time-consuming and contains the possibility of drive rebuilding failure or disk errors, the Automated way – using an advanced RAID data recovery software, is considered the safest approach for restoring data from RAID and NAS devices.
Earlier, NAS used to include high-power hard disk drives. However, Since the RAID introduction, now mostly NAS include RAID levels. Therefore, RAID recovery and NAS recovery can be done with the same approach using a data recovery tool, which rebuilds the RAID virtually to allow safe and successful data recovery.
Conclusion
RAID and NAS are certainly distinct from each other. But, it can’t be said that one is better than the other. These technologies offer different benefits and have their limitations. If you’re thinking to choose one, you should decide as per the data you need to store. Fortunately, these both technologies can be tweaked and used in combination.
Moreover, being a home user, it may be a little expensive to deploy RAID since it uses multiple hard drives to backup files, but it won’t provide security for portable data drives. On the other hand, NAS is easy to scale up as per your storage capacity. And, RAID is better in the workplace. Overall, choose as per your data requirements and preferences.
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This content is brought to you by Kamesh Singh
Photos provided by the author.
