What are the disadvantages of RAID 5 configurations?
There are several disadvantages. RAID 5 results in the loss of storage capacity equivalent to the capacity of one hard drive from the volume. For example, three 500GB hard drives added together comprise 1500GB (or roughly about 1.5 terabytes) of storage. If the three (3) 500GB drives were established as a RAID 0 (striped) configuration, total data storage would equal 1500GB capacity . If these same three (3) drives are configured as a RAID 5 volume (striped with parity), the usable data storage capacity would be 1000GB and not 1500GB, since 500GB (the equivalent of one drives’ capacity) would be utilized for parity. In addition, if two (2) or more drives fail or become corrupted at the same time, all data on the volume would be inaccessible to the user.
