Storage & RAID Calculators

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Cloud Storage Calculator

Estimate cloud storage costs for AWS S3, Azure Blob, Google Cloud. Compare pricing, egress fees, operations. Free, browser-based calculator.

File Size Calculator

Calculate file sizes, storage capacity, and transfer times. Convert between KB, MB, GB, TB. Plan backups and estimate bandwidth needs.

Raid Calculator

Calculate usable storage and redundancy for RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, 60, ZFS RAID-Z, RAID-DP, JBOD. Free calculator with hot spare support.

RAID and Storage Planning

RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) combines multiple drives for performance, redundancy, or both. Understanding RAID levels and their trade-offs is essential for data center planning, NAS configuration, and enterprise storage.

Common RAID Levels

RAID 0 (Striping): Splits data across drives for speed. No redundancy—any drive failure loses all data. Capacity = sum of all drives.

RAID 1 (Mirroring): Duplicates data on two drives. Survives single drive failure. Capacity = size of one drive.

RAID 5: Striping with parity distributed across drives. Survives one drive failure. Requires minimum 3 drives. Capacity = (n-1) × smallest drive.

RAID 6: Like RAID 5 but with double parity. Survives two drive failures. Requires minimum 4 drives. Capacity = (n-2) × smallest drive.

RAID 10: Combines mirroring and striping. Good performance with redundancy. Capacity = 50% of total drive space.

Capacity Calculations

RAID calculators account for parity overhead, mismatched drive sizes, and formatted capacity (which is less than advertised). This helps you accurately plan storage purchases and predict actual usable space.

Choosing a RAID Level

Desktop/scratch storage: RAID 0 for speed, data must be backed up elsewhere
Small NAS: RAID 1 for simple redundancy
Enterprise storage: RAID 6 or RAID 10 for balanced performance and protection