| Level | Read | Write performance | Lost capacity | |
| 0 | Blocks are striped accross the disks. This leads to better read and write performance but causes the entire array to fail if only one disk gets corrupted. | | NX | None |
| 1 | Data is identically stored («mirrored») on multiple drives. | 50 % | |
| 2 | Bit-level striping with dedicated Hamming-code parity. Not commonly used (if at all) | ||
| 3 | Byte-level striping with decicated parity. Not commonly used. | ||
| 4 | Block-level striping with a disk dedicated for parity | ||
| 5 | Block-level striping with parity distributed onto all disk (thus, in contrast to RAID 4, the array becomes more responsive and prevents wearing out the parity drive). The failure of one disk can be tolerated. Requires at least three disks. Generally, RAID 5 is not recommended because a) of its write penalty when managing parity data and b) if a disk fails while an already failed disk is repaired, the whole array becomes useless. | 1 disk | |
| 6 | Same idea as RAID 4 and 5, but parity is distributed on two disks (which cannot be done with XOR, instead a Galois Field is employed). | 2 disks | |
| 10 | Aka RAID 1+0 (i. e. A RAID 0 stripe of mirror sets). Allegedly the more optimal compared to RAID 1 if four drives are available. | 50 % |