COMPTIA A+ Practice Exam 2025 - Free CompTIA A+ Practice Questions and Study Guide

RAID 5 is characterized by its implementation of striping with parity, which is a unique feature that sets it apart from other RAID configurations. In RAID 5, data is distributed across multiple disk drives in stripes, similar to RAID 0; however, it also includes parity information. This parity is calculated based on the data in the other disks and allows for the recovery of data in case one of the drives fails.

The distribution of parity across all drives is what differentiates RAID 5, providing a balance between performance, data redundancy, and storage efficiency. If a single drive fails, the system can continue to operate normally and restore the lost data using the parity information stored on the remaining drives. This means users benefit from improved read performance and fault tolerance, making RAID 5 a popular choice for data storage environments where redundancy is necessary without sacrificing too much storage capacity.

Other RAID schemes, like RAID 1, primarily focus on mirroring for redundancy, while RAID 0 lacks redundancy altogether. Dual parity is a feature seen in RAID setups like RAID 6, which uses an additional layer of parity for even higher data protection but is not specific to RAID 5. Thus, the unique characteristic of RAID 5 is indeed its method of