Raid Configurations; Raid Definitions - Asus P5N32-E SLI Hardware User Manual

5.4

RAID configurations

The motherboard comes with two RAID controllers that allow you to configure
Serial ATA hard disk drives as RAID sets.
• The NVIDIA
performance SATA RAID controller that supports RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1,
RAID 5 and JBOD for six independent Serial ATA channels.
5.4.1

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.
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.
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.
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nForce™ dual x16 SLI Southbridge includes a high
®
Chapter 5: Software support