RAID Simulator
Build a virtual disk array, route read and write payloads through it, inject failures, and watch RAID striping, parity, degraded operation, and rebuilds happen live.
RAID Array Simulator
How this RAID simulation works
The lab uses a simplified block-placement model to make RAID behavior visible. Data blocks are striped across virtual disks, parity rotates between members in RAID 5 and 6, and mirrored levels duplicate blocks. Capacity calculations use the smallest disk in the array, just as traditional RAID controllers do.
Standard and nested RAID
RAID 0 prioritizes throughput without redundancy, RAID 1 mirrors data, RAID 2–4 demonstrate historical dedicated error-correction and parity designs, RAID 5 distributes one parity block, and RAID 6 distributes two. Nested RAID combines those ideas: RAID 0+1 mirrors stripe sets, RAID 10 stripes mirrored pairs, and RAID 50 or 60 stripes across parity groups.
What the timing numbers mean
Latency, throughput, rebuild duration, and conversion duration are planning estimates rather than hardware benchmarks. They model relative write penalties, parallel reads, degraded reconstruction, disk capacity, current utilization, controller cache policy, disk media throughput and latency, and surviving disk count. The progress animations are intentionally time-compressed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about the RAID Simulator
The simulator includes every standard RAID level from RAID 0 through RAID 6, including historical RAID 2, 3, and 4, plus nested RAID 0+1, RAID 10, RAID 50, and RAID 60. Each profile has its own capacity, placement, write-penalty, and failure rules.
No. Payload names and sizes are virtual and remain in your browser. The tool models placement and timing; it never reads or uploads a real file.
Choose read cache, write-through, or write-back behavior and a virtual cache size. Repeated reads can register cache hits, write-through updates cache and disks together, and write-back acknowledges cached writes before a simulated flush.
They are planning estimates based on disk capacity, current utilization, RAID write penalty, surviving disk count, and modeled controller throughput. The on-screen progress animation is intentionally time-compressed.
Traditional RAID arrays are constrained by their smallest member. Capacity above the smallest disk size is unavailable in this simplified model, matching the behavior of common RAID implementations.
RAID 5 tolerates one failed disk, RAID 6 tolerates two, RAID 0 tolerates none, and RAID 10 stays online unless both members of the same mirror pair fail. A degraded array adds simulated read and write latency.
ℹ️ Disclaimer
This tool is provided for informational and educational purposes only. All processing happens entirely in your browser - no data is sent to or stored on our servers. While we strive for accuracy, we make no warranties about the completeness or reliability of results. Use at your own discretion.