A high input/output (I/O) Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) level in which data and redundancy are striped across an array or logical drive. The equivalent of one disk drive’s capacity is used for redundancy data. RAID Level 5 is good for multiuser environments, such as database or file system storage, where typical I/O size is small, and there is a high proportion of read activity.
If a single disk drive fails in a RAID Level 5 array, then all associated logical drives become degraded, but the redundancy data allows access to the data. If two or more disk drives fail in a RAID Level 5 array, then all associated logical drives fail, and all data is lost.