Setting Up Raid; Raid Definitions - Asus Motherboard P5MT-S Owner's Manual

5.1

Setting up RAID

The motherboard comes with the following RAID solutions:
• LSI Logic Embedded SATA RAID technology embedded in the Intel
ICH7R Southbridge supports up to four SATA hard disk drives and
RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 0+1 configurations.
• Adaptec AIC-7901X PCI-X SCSI controller supports SCSI hard disk
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drives and RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 configurations.
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
configuration provides data protection and increases fault tolerance to the
entire system. 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 0+1 is data striping and data mirroring combined without parity
(redundancy data) having to be calculated and written. With the RAID
0+1 configuration you get all the benefits of both RAID 0 and RAID 1
configurations. Use four new hard disk drives or use an existing drive and
three new drives for this setup.
JBOD (Spanning) stands for Just a Bunch of Disks and refers to hard disk
drives that are not yet configured as a RAID set. This configuration stores
the same data redundantly on multiple disks that appear as a single disk on
the operating system. Spanning does not deliver any advantage over using
separate disks independently and does not provide fault tolerance or other
RAID performance benefits.
If you want to boot the system from a hard disk drive included in a
created RAID set, copy first the RAID driver from the support CD to a
floppy disk before you install an operating system to the selected hard
disk drive. Refer to Chapter 6 for details.
ASUS P5MT-S
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5-1