It's RAIDing on my umbrella (of data storage devices)

Tonight I decided I needed to understand how RAIDs work, so I went to whom wikipedia's technology section would be if it was ever actualized in 3 dimensions: Human Dynamo.

"Dynamo, I do not understand. How do RAIDs work? I'm all confused, cause I thought a RAID was one thing, and it turns out if could be many different things...well, let me use an apt metaphor to describe it. It's like if you see an animal, and you tell someone 'I just saw a grey wolf outside' and they know exactly what you mean. But then you find out people use the word grey wolf like they use the word canine, and so what you saw could have meant red fox, grey wolf, dog, hell even dingo, to many different people."

*stunned silence from Dynamo*

Dynamo's lady friend: "No, I completely understand. It's like when you're in school, right, and your teacher tells you that a square is a parallelogram, but just because something is a parallelogram doesn't mean it's a square."

*High fives for the assist on the metaphor and explanation. Understanding is key to any good relationship.*

"Ok, but that's not...something about a grey wolf could also be a female or a male...so you see," Dynamo possibly said.

"No, Dynamo, that is completely incorrect. Whether it's female or male, it's still a grey wolf," I scientifically explained. "Also, in hindsight, I would like to tell you that there's no way you should get close enough to a live wolf to tell if it's male or female," I said, thinking ahead.

"See, L-Bo, a RAID IS* a bunch of drives all working together like you thought, but there can be different arrays and setups: mirrored, stripey-striped, mirror-stripey-striped and parity check.**"

"Dynamo, despite me being a 12th level intellect, and stunningly handsome, I do not understand."

"Ok, let's say there's a bunch of wolves, and they're out hunting in a pack..."

"WHOA, WHOA!! Why did you go with wolves, and not parallelograms? Huh??!!" Said an angry Dynamo's lady friend.

"Because, silly, parallelograms don't hunt in packs. They prefer to go the solo route."

"Oh, now I understand. Thanks L Bo," said a mollified and still anti-hyphenation Dynamo's lady friend.

"Anyway," began Dynamo, vainly trying to refocus the conversation, "let's say the wolves are out hunting bucks. Big buck hunting, if you will."

"Wolves don't hunt bucks," said a quite contrary D.L.F.

"No, they do." Said I. Quite succinctly.

"Well, a striped array would be like if one wolf went this way, and the other kind of flanked him, and this one went after the buck first and then this one followed."

"Okkkkk. I don't get it," said I, not getting it.

Eventually it was all explained, making me expert enough to write this article for you all to fully understand how a RAID worked, what it does and why they're so important. In case you need further details, however, go here: RAID.



*Is is just capitalized, IS does not stand for anything. RAID on the other hand stands for Redundant Array of Independent Drives.

**Note: I put no actual research into this and just kind of wrote things I thought I remembered.