RAID is an acronym first defined by David A. Patterson, Garth A. Gibson, and Randy Katz at the University of California, Berkeley in 1987 to describe a redundant array of inexpensive disks,[1] a technology that allowed computer users to achieve high levels of storage reliability from low-cost and less reliable PC-class disk-drive components, via the technique of arranging the devices into arrays for redundancy.
Marketers representing industry RAID manufacturers later reinvented the term to describe a redundant array of independent disks as a means of dissociating a "low cost" expectation from RAID technology.[2]