RAID 5 : Concept & Practical Implementation

Implementing a RAID-5 volume requires a minimum of three and a maximum of 32 disks in the set. The physical disks do not need to be identical. However, there must be equal size blocks of unused space available on each physical disk in the set. The disks can be on the same or different controllers. As with striped volumes, you cannot add disks to a RAID-5 volume if you need to increase the size of the volume later.

If one of the disks in a RAID-5 volume fails, none of the data is lost.

RAID 5

Practical

Note - As we are working with Virtual Machine, so hard disk creation part is equivalent to attaching extra physical hard disks practically.

Steps
Attach three Hard Disks as HD1, HD2 and HD3 in Windows Server 2008 Click here to know how to add Hard Disk in Virtual Machine and Start the machine.

Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools
Double Click on Computer Management
Select Disk Management
OK

Right Click on Disk 1 and Select New RAID 5 Volume ...

Next
Add all the three Hard Disks and Specify the amount of space in MB as 50 (Notice that the same value will be set for all 3 disks)

Assign drive letter N

Next

Check Perform quick format

Next -> Finish -> Yes

Notice the aqua color. The color codes are specific for each kind of RAID technology.

A New Volume (N:) is created. (you can check in My Computer). You can store some data in this drive.

Now we have to corrupt any of the disk. shut down the machine. Remove any one of the newly added hard disk from the machine. Click here to know How to remove a Hard Disk in Oracle VM VirtualBox and start the machine again.

Go to My Computer. Oh ! Though you have removed a disk but the New Volume (N:) is safe where we have stored some data.

Now 

Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools

Double Click on Computer Management

Under the Storage node, Select Disk Management

The task is to recover from this failure. Purchase a new hard disk and attach it to the machine. In our case, shutdown machine. Create a new disk and add it to the machine  Click here to know how to add Hard Disk in Virtual Machine and Start the machine.

Go to Disk Management i.e.

Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools

Double Click on Computer Management

Under the Storage node, Select Disk Management
Give OK for the new disk added.

Right Click on any of the failed disk and select Repair Volume

Select the purchased disk (we attached just now) and give OK -> Yes

Note - Do not delete the Missing Volume.

You have recovered from the failure and all the disks are healthy.

Conclusion: 

In RAID 5, We were able to recover from disk failure and there was no data loss due to the removal of hard disk from the machine.