A concatenation assembles several physical devices into a volume with a size equal to the total of the separate devices. Use a concatenation if you need a larger physical volume without additional data security. A concatenation consists of physical devices.

A stripe assembles several physical devices into a volume with a size equal to the total of the separate devices and distributes any stored data evenly across all physical volumes. Use a stripe if you need a larger physical volume and faster overall disk access without additional data security. A stripe consists of physical devices.

A mirror replicates data by maintaining multiple copies. A mirror is composed of one or more simple volumes (concatenations, stripes, or concat/stripes) called submirrors. A mirror provides protection against physical disk failure, but requires at least twice as much physical disk space as a traditional volume (e.g., to have a 1 GB mirror, you would need to have two or more 1 GB devices). A mirror can be made up of physical slices, or of concatenation, stripe, or concatenated stripe volumes.

A RAID 5 device replicates data by using parity information. In the case of missing data, the missing data can be regenerated using available data and the parity information. A RAID 5 volume is composed of slices. One slice's worth of space is allocated to parity information, but it is distributed across all slices in the RAID 5 volume. A RAID 5 device requires one additional unit more than the storage you require. For example, a RAID 5 device providing 20 GB of storage would require 5 simple volumes of 5 GB each, while a concatenation of GB would require only 20 GB of total space. A RAID 5 device can be made up of physical slices, or of concatenation, stripe, or concatenated stripe volumes.