Western Governors University (WGU) ICSC3120 C952 Computer Architecture Practice Exam

The choice indicating RAID 3 is correct because this RAID level employs dedicated parity to maintain data integrity across the array. In RAID 3, data is striped across multiple disks, but unlike other RAID configurations, it utilizes a single dedicated disk for storing parity information. This parity allows the system to recover lost data by using a bit-wise XOR operation between the data blocks and the parity block. This ensures that if one of the disks fails, the system can reconstruct the missing data using the remaining data blocks along with the parity information.

RAID 3 is particularly effective for applications that require high performance for large blocks of data, such as video editing or other tasks that process substantial amounts of information continuously. The dedicated parity mechanism is fundamental to how RAID 3 achieves both data redundancy and fault tolerance, distinguishing it from other RAID levels that may either mirror data (like RAID 1) or not provide any redundancy at all (like RAID 0).

Using this parity scheme allows RAID 3 to maintain data integrity effectively, ensuring that even in the event of hardware failure, critical data remains recoverable.