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Appendix II: RAID Setup
Introduction to RAID
RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) technology is a sophisticated disk management
system that manages multiple disk drives. It enhances I/O performance and provides redundancy in
order to prevent the loss of data in case of individual disk failure. The RAID facility on this board
provides RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and RAID SPAN. The total number of drives you can apply
depends on the number of connectors on your board. A board with 2 PATA connectors and 4 SATA
connectors can connect up to 8 drives (4 PATA drives and 4 SATA drives). However one of the
PATA drives may be used for the CD-ROM drive, in which case the maximum number of drives will
be 5. The descriptions below are based on 2 PATA connectors and 4 SATA connectors.
Disk Striping (RAID 0)
Striping is a performance-oriented, non-redundant disk storage technology. With RAID striping,
multiple disks are used to form a larger virtual disk. Data is then striped or mapped across all the
physical disks. In this way, multiple I/O operations can be executed in parallel, enhancing
performance. Striping does not provide fault tolerance. The minimum number of hard drives for
RAID 0 is 2.
Disk Mirroring (RAID 1)
With Disk Mirroring there are redundant disks that mirror the primary disks. Data that is written to
the primary disks are also written to the redundant disks. This redundancy provides fault tolerant
protection from a single disk failure. If a read/write failure occurs on one drive, the system can still
read and write data using the other drive. The minimum number of drives for a RAID 1 configuration
is 2. You are required to use an even number of drives.
Disk Striping + Mirroring (RAID 0+1)
This mode combines both the performance benefits of RAID 0 with the fault tolerance of RAID 1.
The minimum number of drives for RAID 0+1 configuration is 4 drives. This configuration also
requires an even number of drives. Note: All mirrored configurations or striped/mirrored
configurations should use drives of the same size.
RAID SPAN
RAID SPAN allows JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) configurations which simply uses multiple disks
to form a larger virtual disk without any other specialized disk management functionality. RAID
SPAN is not considered a standard RAID implementation.
Before create RAID Array
Before you configure your RAID Array, you have to enable the “RAID config” option in the BIOS
Setup Utility.
1. After you boot your system, press the “Del” key when prompted to enter the BIOS Setup Utility.
2. The “RAID config” option for enabling RAID will be found on the “Peripherals” screen as part of
the “IDE Function Setup” section shown as below-left (Peripherals >> IDE Function Setup >> RAID
config). Arrow down to the IDE RAID item and press enter.
3.On the “RAID config” screen (shown below-right), enable the disks that you want to use as RAID
disks (in this example there are four SATA hard drives configured as RAID disks).