RAID Calculator

Using Our RAID Requirement Calculator for Security Solutions

You can determine the RAID required for your next video security project with our dependable RAID calculator. This easy-to-use tool requires you to fill out no more than three fields to measure the RAID requirement for your video surveillance solutions, including your number of drives, drive size in gigabytes (GB) and RAID level. Please note that:

RAID 1 requires two drives.
RAID 10 requires the number of drives to be a multiple of two.
RAID 5 requires three or more drives.
RAID 6 requires four or more drives but is recommended when using more than eight drives.

If you choose a RAID level that does not reflect the required number of drives, the calculator will show an error in the array size field.

After you fill in the required fields, our calculator will give you a total value in GB, an array size in terabytes (TB) and a level of usable RAID disk space in TB. You can obtain purpose-built IP video storage solutions for your security needs at BCD. When you come to us, you can expect guaranteed performance paired with white-glove service.

Calculate the RAID required for your next video surveillance project by utilizing the BCD RAID calculator.

To calculate network bandwidth requirements and storage space, use our Bandwidth and Storage Calculator.

*For a verified solution, please reach out to our sales department in order to validate the build for your project and guarantee its performance.

Digital security systems have virtually replaced tape and VCR video surveillance systems, improving performance with higher frame rates, better resolution and megapixel video quality. However, these Internet Protocol (IP)-based technologies have created challenges with digital video recorder (DVR) failure, leading to data loss. Luckily, there’s a way to safeguard your video data.

RAID requirements for multiple-drive security systems are crucial for minimizing the risk of data loss.

What Are RAID Requirements for Video Surveillance Solutions?

RAID stands for redundant array of independent disks. This data storage virtualization technology combines multiple physical disk drives into one or more units for data redundancy or performance improvement purposes. How data is distributed across the drives depends on their RAID levels, or the required redundancy and performance measures.

Each RAID level comprises a different balance of reliability, performance, availability and capacity. The most common RAID levels for security systems include:

RAID 1: Also called mirroring, RAID 1 is when identical data is stored twice across a data drive and mirror drive. The RAID controller uses the remaining drive to recover the data in case a drive fails.
RAID 5: In RAID 5, data blocks are striped across the drives, meaning data is split evenly between three or more disks, while a parity of all block data is written on a single drive. If any data becomes unavailable, you can use the parity data to recalculate the information from the other data blocks.
RAID 6: Similar to RAID 5, this configuration requires at least four drives and writes the parity data on two drives instead of one, meaning it can recreate lost information even if two drives die simultaneously.
RAID 10: RAID 10 is a combination of RAID 1 and RAID 0, which accelerates data transfers by transforming four or more drives into two mirrors that are then striped. This array can sustain multiple drive losses as long as two disks in the same mirror pair do not fail.