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Configuring Units
Leaving Individual Drives as JBODs
By default, if you leave individual drives unconfigured (JBODs),
they will not be available to the operating system. If you want to be
able to use individual drives, configure them as single-disk units.
If you have JBODs attached to an 8000 controller that you want to
use with the 9000 controller, see "Migrating Units from an 8000
Controller to a 9000 Controller" on page 23.
Initializing Units
Performance of RAID 5 units with 5 or more disks, and RAID 50
units with 10 or 12 disks configured into two subunits will improve
after the unit has been initialized. For these configurations,
foreground initialization (also known as "zeroing") starts
immediately. If you want to begin using the units right away, you
can halt the zeroing process and initialize them in the background
later, after the operating system is booted. (The initialization
process can take several hours, depending on the size of your
drives.) The disadvantage of initializing the units later in the
background is that the performance RAID 5 and RAID 50 arrays
will be lower until initialization is complete.
Information about initialization for each of the different RAID
types is described below.
RAID 0 Units
RAID 0 units do not need to be initialized and are immediately
available for use with full performance when created.
For RAID 5 and RAID 50 Units
RAID 5 units with 3 or 4 disks do not need to be initialized and are
fault tolerant upon creation. Similarly, RAID 50 units with 6, 8, or 9
disks, and RAID 50 with 12 disks configured into 3 subunits of 4 or
4 subunits of 3, do not need to be initialized. This is because these
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3ware 9000 Series Serial ATA RAID Controller Installation Guide
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