Simple

Arranges the disks sequentially and contiguously. A simple layout allows a file system to be created from multiple regions of one or more disks if there is not enough space on a single region of a disk.

Striped

Spreads the data evenly across multiple disks. Stripes are equal-sized fragments that are allocated alternately and evenly to the disks. Throughput increases with the number of disks across which a file system is striped. Striping helps to balance I/O load in cases where high traffic areas exist on certain disks.

Mirrored

Mirrors the information contained in the file system to provide redundancy of data. For the redundancy to be useful, each mirror should contain disk space from different disks.

Mirrored-stripe

Configures a striped file system and then mirrors it. This requires at least two disks for striping and one or more other disks for mirroring (depending on whether the mirror is simple or striped). The advantages of this layout are increased performance by spreading data across multiple disks and redundancy of data.

Striped-mirror

Configures several mirrors as the columns of a striped file system. This layout offers the same benefits as a mirrored-stripe file system. In addition, it provides faster recovery as the failure of single disk does not force an entire striped mirror offline.