Raid Configurations - Asus P5WDG2 WS Professional User Manual

5.4

RAID configurations

The motherboard comes with the Intel
that allow you to configure Serial ATA hard disk drives as RAID sets. The
motherboard supports the following RAID configurations.
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 10 is data striping and data mirroring combined without parity
(redundancy data) having to be calculated and written. With the RAID
10 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.
RAID 5 stripes both data and parity information across three or more hard
disk drives. Among the advantages of RAID 5 configuration include better
HDD performance, fault tolerance, and higher storage capacity. The RAID 5
configuration is best suited for transaction processing, relational database
applications, enterprise resource planning, and other business systems.
Use a minimum of three identical hard disk drives for this setup.
Intel Matrix Storage. The Intel
®
the ICH7R chip allows you to create a RAID 0 and a RAID 1 set using only
two identical hard disk drives. The Intel
two partitions on each hard disk drive to create a virtual RAID 0 and RAID
1 sets. This technology also allows you to change the hard disk drive
partition size without losing any data.
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 section "5.6 Creating a RAID driver disk" for details.
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ICH7R Southbridge RAID controllers
®
Matrix Storage technology supported by
®
Matrix Storage technology creates
®
Chapter 5: Software support