What type of data handling does RAID 5 use?

RAID 5 employs a method known as striping with parity, which is key to how it manages data for both performance and redundancy. In this configuration, data blocks are distributed across multiple drives, and for every set of data written, parity information is also created. This parity is stored on the different disks in the array, which allows RAID 5 to sum up the data across the drives and reconstruct it if one drive fails.

This capability of RAID 5 to tolerate the failure of a single drive while still maintaining data integrity is a primary benefit of this approach. The striping aspect contributes to improved read performance, as data can be read from multiple disks simultaneously. The inclusion of parity means that while there is a slight overhead in writing data (because the parity must be calculated and written), it provides a crucial safety net against data loss.

In contrast, the options related to mirroring, simple disk access, or striping only each lack the important redundancy aspect provided by parity, which is fundamental to the operation of RAID 5.