Developing a Drive Performance Strategy

By managing the placement of data on drives, you can both improve performance and implement fault tolerance. In the context of managing drive storage for Microsoft® SQL Server™ installation, performance refers in part to the speed of read and write operations, and fault tolerance refers to the ability of the system to continue functioning without data loss when part of the system fails.

You can use the following methods to manage the placement of data on disk drives:

• Hardware-based RAID (redundant array of independent disks) above level 0 can protect against data loss in the event of media failure, and can improve performance. For more information, see your vendor's documentation.
• Both Microsoft Windows NT®-based disk striping and striping with parity can improve performance. Disk striping with parity also protects against data loss in the event of media failure.
• Windows NT-based disk mirroring and duplexing are both fault-tolerance mechanisms that protect against data loss in the event of media failure. They can also improve read performance.

Important These fault-tolerance methods do not replace proper backup strategies. You must perform periodic backups to protect your databases and data against catastrophic loss.

For more information about Windows NT disk striping, mirroring, and duplexing, see your Windows NT documentation.

See Also

Backing Up and Restoring Databases