What is the main characteristic of RAID 0?

RAID 0 is primarily characterized by striping without providing any fault tolerance. This configuration splits data into strips and writes them across multiple disks simultaneously. The main advantage of RAID 0 is that it enhances performance, as read and write operations can occur simultaneously across multiple drives, leading to increased speed.

However, because RAID 0 does not include any mirroring or parity, it offers no redundancy; if one drive fails, all the data across the RAID 0 array is lost. Thus, the focus on striping is purely for performance enhancement at the cost of data protection. It is essential to have regular backups when using RAID 0 due to this lack of fault tolerance. Other RAID configurations, such as RAID 1 or RAID 5, include mirroring or parity to protect against data loss, but RAID 0 does not offer these features, making its characteristic distinctive.