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Tiger i7320 S5350 Chapter 4: SATA/RAID Setup (for SATA RAID model)
4-1
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Chapter 4: SATA/RAID Setup
4.1 Introduction
This section describes the SATA/RAID function of your Tiger i7320 and how to configure your
system. This section also covers Intel Application Accelerator RAID Edition software and its
configuration.
Your new Tyan Tiger i7320 S5350 features an integrated serial ATA controller which supports
two serial ports running at 1.5 Gb/s with support for RAID 0 or 1.
4.2 What is RAID?
RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) was originally conceived at the University of
California at Berkeley in 1987 by David A. Patterson, Garth Gibson, and Randy H. Katz. The
focus of their research was to improve storage subsystem performance and reliability. As a
result of their findings, they proposed five levels of RAID (RAID 0 – RAID 5) to provide a
balance of performance and data protection. Each RAID level is designed for speed, data
protection, or a combination of both. Patterson, Gibson, and Katz published their findings in a
document titled “A Case for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)”. This document is
archived at the University of California, Berkeley.
RAID was designed to improve the way computers manage and access mass storage of data
by providing an independent and redundant system of disks. Instead of writing to one Single
Large Expensive Disk (SLED), RAID writes to multiple independent disks.
4.2.1 RAID0 (stripping)
RAID 0 exploits the read/write capabilities of two or more hard drives working in unison to
maximize the storage performance of a computer system. Data in a RAID 0 array is arranged
into blocks that are interleaved between disks so that reads and writes can be performed in
parallel.
This technique, known as “striping”, is the fastest of all of the RAID levels, especially for
reading and writing large sequential files.
4.2.2 RAID 1 (mirroring)
A RAID 1 array contains two hard drives and data is mirrored between the two drives in real
time. Since all of the data is duplicated, the operating system treats the usable space of a
RAID 1 array as the maximum size of one hard drive in the array. For example, two 40 GB
hard drives in a RAID 1 array will appear as a single 40 GB hard drive to the operating system.
The primary benefit of RAID 1 mirroring is that it provides good data reliability in the case of a
single disk failure. When one disk drive fails, all data is immediately available on the other
without any impact to the data integrity. In the case of a disk failure, the computer system will
remain fully operational to ensure maximum productivity. The performance of a RAID 1 array
is greater than that of a single drive since data can be read from multiple disks simultaneously.