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Chapter 5
SiS965/SiS965L SATA RAID Setup Guide
Introduction for SiS965/SiS965L SATA RAID Function
The SiS965 S-ATA Host controller supports up to four serial ATA on four independent
ports, but the SiS965L S-ATA controller only supports two SATA ports of up to two Serial
ATA drives. The Serial ATA RAID is designed to provide a cost-effective, high performance
RAID solution that adds performance and/or reliability to PC desktops and/or servers using
Serial ATA/150 hard disks.
Serial ATA RAID function supports striping (RAID 0), mirroring (RAID 1), striping+mirroring
(RAID0+1) and span (JBOD). Please note that the function supports hard disk drives only.
With striping, identical drives can read and write data in parallel to increase performance.
Mirroring increases read performance through load balancing and elevator sorting while
creating a complete backup of your files. Span would increase the logic hard disk space.
Serial ATA RAID striped arrays can double the sustained data transfer rate of Serial ATA/
150. Serial ATA RAID fully supports Serial ATA/150 specification of up to 150MB/sec per
drive, depending on individual drive specifications.
Features
•
The SiS965 controller supports up to four Serial ATA (Serial ATA RAID) drivers,
but SiS965L controller suppotrs up to two Serial ATA drives.
•
Support RAID function: RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, JBOD. (SiS965L does not
support RAID 0+1)
•
Support bootable disk.
•
Windows-based RAID Utility software tool (only support Windows XP and
2000).
•
BIOS Utility.
Support Operating Systems
Support Microsoft Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000 Professional and Server/XP.
What is RAID?
This section will give you an overview about the RAID system and introduce the basic
background and glossary which you need to know before using "SiS RAID Controller Appli-
cation".
1
RAID: (Redundant Array of Independent Disk Drives) use jointly several hard
drives to increase data transfer rates and data security. It depends on the
number of drives present and RAID function you select to fulfill the security
or performance purposes or both.
2
RAID 0: Also known as "Stripping". All of the data are distributed evenly to all
of the existing drives. You gain benefits on performance because the data
transfer rate is multiplied by the number of drives. However, RAID 0 has high
risks of data security. All of the stored data will be lost if even any one drive
in the RAID set crashes.
3
RAID 1: Also known as "Mirroring". Two hard drives are required. The goal of
RAID 0 is to ensure data security. Data is written to two or more drives
synchronously. That is, 100% duplication of data from one drive to another.
SiS965/SiS965L SATA RAID Setup Guide
49
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