ASUS Z97M-PLUS
5-1
Chapter 5
RAID support
5
5.1 RAID configurations
The motherboard supports the following SATA RAID solutions:
• Intel
®
Rapid Storage Technology with RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10 and RAID 5 support.
If you want to install a Windows
®
operating system to a hard disk drive included in a RAID
set, you have to create a RAID driver disk and load the RAID driver during OS installation.
Refer to section 5.2 Creating a RAID driver disk for details.
5.1.1 RAID definitions
RAID 0 (Data striping) optimizes two identical hard disk drives to read and write data in
parallel, interleaved stacks. Two hard disks perform the same work as a single drive but at a
sustained data transfer rate, double that of a single disk alone, thus improving data access
and storage. Use of two new identical hard disk drives is required for this setup.
RAID 1 (Data mirroring) copies and maintains an identical image of data from one drive to
a second drive. If one drive fails, the disk array management software directs all applications
to the surviving drive as it contains a complete copy of the data in the other drive. This RAID
congurationprovidesdataprotectionandincreasesfaulttolerancetotheentiresystem.Use
two new drives or use an existing drive and a new drive for this setup. The new drive must be
of the same size or larger than the existing drive.
RAID 5 stripes both data and parity information across three or more hard disk drives. Among
theadvantagesofRAID5congurationincludebetterHDDperformance,faulttolerance,and
higherstoragecapacity.TheRAID5congurationisbestsuitedfortransactionprocessing,
relational database applications, enterprise resource planning, and other business systems.
Use a minimum of three identical hard disk drives for this setup.
RAID 10 is data striping and data mirroring combined without parity (redundancy data) having
tobecalculatedandwritten.WiththeRAID10congurationyougetallthebenetsofboth
RAID0andRAID1congurations.Usefournewharddiskdrivesoruseanexistingdrive
and three new drives for this setup.
Chapter 5: RAID support