/ TRAID vs TRAID+: Which RAID Type Should You Choose for TerraMaster NAS?

In today's digital era, the security and reliability of data have become increasingly crucial. Whether for home users or enterprise-level users, there is an urgent demand for the protection and management of data. With the continuous advancement of technology, TerraMaster has introduced TRAID and its upgraded version, TRAID+, to meet users' ever-growing pursuit of data storage security and efficiency. The emergence of these two technologies provides users with more options, but understanding their advantages, limitations, and suitable scenarios is essential before making a choice.

TRAID: Flexible Disk Array Management Tool

TRAID, the abbreviation of TerraMaster RAID, is a flexible disk array management tool developed by TerraMaster. It automatically combines disk space, provides redundancy protection for hard disk failures, and supports automatic expansion, offering users an optimized, flexible, and elastic disk array management solution. For novice users, the automated configuration of TRAID is undoubtedly a significant advantage, allowing users to easily build reliable data storage systems without requiring extensive professional knowledge.

TRAID+: Elevated Disk Array Management

Recently, TerraMaster launched the public testing of TOS 6 Beta version, introducing over 40 brand new features. This upgrade provides TNAS users with an unparalleled experience. Every aspect, from the entirely new user interface to the enhanced data security, has been meticulously refined to ensure users have the most advanced storage and management solutions.

Among these enhancements, TRAID+ stands out as a major highlight of the new system release. TRAID+ not only inherits all the excellent features of TRAID but also achieves breakthroughs in redundancy protection. Compared to traditional TRAID, TRAID+ offers a higher level of data security by increasing hard disk fault tolerance to 2 disks, thus providing users with even more robust data protection.

Benefits of Using TRAID

In this digital age, our data volume is rapidly increasing, and hard drive capacity is almost doubling every 3 years. As we invest in larger capacity hard drives, we also hope that older drives can continue to be utilized effectively. However, traditional array modes often fail to meet such demands.

TRAID effectively addresses this issue. By leveraging Linux disk management tools, TerraMaster cleverly partitions hard drive space of different capacities into smaller partitions, and then combines them with redundancy strategies to reassemble the partitions. Once TRAID is set up, users can still replace larger capacity hard drives or add more hard drives to expand the array's storage space as needed.

Compared to traditional arrays, besides redundancy protection, TRAID significantly enhances disk space utilization efficiency. Users can continuously add hard drives to expand storage capacity within the array, even if there are significant differences in hard drive capacities.

Limitations and Drawbacks of TRAID 

Although TRAID performs admirably in terms of capacity utilization, its data security falls slightly short compared to traditional RAID 6 technology. TRAID only provides redundancy protection for one hard disk, which means that if one disk fails, the system can still function normally, but the security of user data may be compromised.

Benefits of Using TRAID+

The working principle of TRAID+ is similar to RAID 6. It partitions disk space into multiple storage units and utilizes RAID 6 features to reorganize them, forming an array combination with elastic expansion capability. This design not only ensures data reliability but also provides excellent storage efficiency. While TRAID ensures redundancy protection for one hard disk, TRAID+ doubles this protective measure, allowing for redundancy protection of two hard disks, thereby significantly enhancing data security.

Choose TRAID or TRAID+?

For regular home users or small businesses with a high demand for storage space utilization and relatively low requirements for data security, TRAID may be a good choice. TRAID's configuration can help users easily build reliable data storage systems.

However, for those users with higher demands for data security, especially professional or business users, TRAID+ may be more suitable for their needs. TRAID+ offers a higher level of data security protection, ensuring more reliable protection for critical data. Although building a TRAID+ array requires more hard drives and comes with a relatively higher cost, for these users, it is a worthwhile investment.

TerraMaster provides users with both TRAID and TRAID+ as flexible disk array management tools. Users should weigh their actual needs and budget when making a decision. Whether choosing TRAID or TRAID+, the goal is to enhance data storage security and efficiency, allowing users to manage and protect their data with greater confidence.

TRAID: https://www.terra-master.com/global/terramaster-traid

TRAID+: https://www.terra-master.com/global/press/index/view/id/1939/