RAID 50 is a striped arrangement of RAID 5 sets.

• A. The statement is True
• B. The statement is False
• C. It depends on configuration
• D. Requires SSDs

Answer: (B)

RAID 50 is built by creating multiple RAID 5 sets and then striping those sets with RAID 0. In other words, data is distributed across several RAID 5 groups, and those groups are striped together to present one logical volume. That is exactly what “a striped arrangement of RAID 5 sets” means. The striping provides higher throughput because I/O can occur in parallel across the groups, while the parity in each RAID 5 set gives fault tolerance within that set. You can survive a single disk failure in each RAID 5 group, with a rebuild happening from the parity inside that group. However, if more than one disk fails within the same RAID 5 group, that group fails and data can be lost for that stripe, compromising the entire array. A practical RAID 50 configuration typically requires at least two RAID 5 groups (often with three or more disks per group, i.e., at least six disks total). It offers a good balance of performance and redundancy, stronger than RAID 0 and RAID 5 alone but not as tolerant as RAID 6 in the face of multiple simultaneous failures.