What does RAID 5 utilize to achieve fault tolerance?

RAID 5 achieves fault tolerance through the use of striping with parity. This method involves dividing data into blocks and distributing those blocks across multiple drives, known as striping. In addition to the data, RAID 5 calculates and stores parity information, which provides a way to recover data in the event of a drive failure.

When one drive fails in a RAID 5 configuration, the system can use the parity information alongside the remaining data blocks to reconstruct the lost data, thus ensuring that no data is permanently lost. This makes RAID 5 a popular choice for many systems that require a balance of performance, storage capacity, and fault tolerance. The parity calculation allows for efficient use of disk space compared to mirroring, as it requires less storage overhead.

This approach contrasts with other options, which may focus on duplication or simpler methods of data protection, but do not offer the same combination of performance and redundancy as RAID 5 does through its striping with parity method.