A traditional relay race, in which you have four runners each of whom must complete their section of the race is, of course, analogous to a RAID 0 configuration of disks. In RAID 0 there is no mirroring of data across the disks and so if one or more disks fail then the file you're trying to retrieve, being spread across the four disks, is lost. Likewise in a traditional relay race, if one or more of the runners fail, the race is lost.

Drawing this analogy between RAID disk configurations and relay races, one can immediately see how limited traditional relay races are, and the exciting possibilities of creating relay races which use other RAID configurations. For example a 'RAID 1' relay race would have your four runners separately complete their sections of the race, and the time would be taken from the fastest runner. This would be an excellent RAID configuration to use on uneven ground as up to three of your runners could fall over with your team still winning the race.
-- hippo, Jun 11 2021

RAID https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
[hippo, Jun 11 2021]

isn't RAID a bit more horrendously complicated than that?

Presumably you have many runners running multiple complete races between them, each runner would be doing different parts of the same race. And if too many runners for a section fail, the countries' olympic team is disqualified from all events.
-- Loris, Jun 11 2021


But are runners inexpensive?
-- RayfordSteele, Jun 11 2021


[Loris] A RAID5 arrangement could be used to reconstruct a replacement athlete should any individual in the team become corrupt and fail a drugs test for example. The only downside is in this analogy, they'd have to race alongside everyone else.
-- zen_tom, Jun 11 2021


//But are runners inexpensive?//

Redundant ones are.
-- bs0u0155, Jun 11 2021


// //But are runners inexpensive?// Redundant ones are.// - ba-dum tish! - niche joke
-- hippo, Jun 12 2021


Niches have us in stitches.

That's how the proverb goes, isn't it?
-- pertinax, Jun 12 2021



random, halfbakery