IPVideo Corporation has been manufacturing RAID1 storage options for its video management systems for the past year Our customers, particularly those that do not have the resources to effectively monitor total system performance, have found RAID1 to be a reliable and user friendly approach for critical storage.
Some of the reasons IPVideo Corporation recommends RAID1:
All data is mirrored on both hard drives in the array for redundant protection of all recorded video. This is normal data, no striping.
RAID1 provides a simple rebuild process; upon hard drive failure, plug in a new drive and walk away. No user intervention required.
RAID1 allows the user to remove a hard drive at any time without causing any downtime. Users can provide authorities with the actual hard drive the video was recorded on, retaining the chain of evidence. Video can be played back on any PC with USB attached drive carriage.
RAID1 will auto-rebuild. Video will continue to store normally during array rebuild process. No particular vulnerability. RAID5 takes a significant amount of time to rebuild in the event of a failed array. RAID5 is in a degraded state during a rebuild and is vulnerable to data loss in the event of a second drive failure. The data is also vulnerable to loss until all the data that was on the failed drive is rebuilt onto a replacement drive.
RAID1 stores fewer video streams per drive letter, this improves load balancing as compared to other RAID levels that consolidate drives on to one stripe or drive letter since Windows effectively uses the extra throughput of the extra physical spindles.
RAID1 has a lower failure rate. For example, consider a RAID 1 array with two identical models of a disk drive with a 5% probability that the disk would fail within three years. Provided that the failures are statistically independent, then the probability of both drives failing (with no replacements for 3 years) is 0.25%.
RAID5 configurations suffer from poor performance when faced with a workload which includes many writes which are smaller than the capacity of a single stripe.
If you have a comment or some insight into RAID options for security video storage we would appreciate hearing from you.