Disk arrays and performance characteristics Which RAID level offers the fastest read/write performance and the most storage efficiency, but provides no redundancy or fault tolerance?

Introduction / Context:
RAID configurations trade performance, capacity efficiency, and fault tolerance. Understanding these trade-offs is essential for choosing storage for OLTP logs, data warehouses, or scratch/temp spaces. This question targets the performance-vs-resilience extremes.

Given Data / Assumptions:

• We compare standard RAID levels.
• “Fastest and most efficient storage” means minimal overhead.
• No redundancy implies risk of data loss on a single-disk failure.

Concept / Approach:

RAID-0 stripes data across disks with no parity or mirroring. This maximizes throughput and usable capacity, but a single disk failure loses the entire array. RAID-1 mirrors (50% efficiency), RAID-5/6 add parity (capacity overhead), and RAID-10 mirrors then stripes (performance + redundancy with higher cost).

Step-by-Step Solution:

Verification / Alternative check:

Systems architecture references list RAID-0 as highest performance/efficiency and highest risk. It is suited to transient data or scratch volumes where loss is acceptable.

Why Other Options Are Wrong:

• RAID-1 mirrors—half capacity, strong redundancy, slower writes.
• RAID-2/3 are specialized and include parity/ECC overhead.
• RAID-5 distributes parity, reducing net capacity and write speed.

Common Pitfalls:

• Deploying RAID-0 for critical data without robust backups and replication.
• Assuming RAID replaces backups; it does not.

Final Answer:

RAID-0 (striping, no parity).