Raid Configurations - Asus P5W User Manual

5.4

RAID configurations

The motherboard comes with four Serial ATA RAID solutions:
• ASUS EZ-Backup. Enabled by Silicon Image's SiI4723 controller, ASUS
EZ-Backup provides ready-to-go hardware RAID for plug-and play RAID 1 and
easy-to-configure RAID 0 sets of two hard disk drives
• Intel ICH7R Southbridge RAID provides RAID level 5 support for three or
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more hard disk drives.
• Cross-RAID allows you to build a RAID 10 set through a cross-configuration of
ASUS EZ-Backup and Intel
• JMicron RAID. Enabled by JMicron
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extends the advantages of software RAID beyond internal hard disk drives to
an external disk or external, port-multiplier enabled enclosure
While individually the RAID implementations offer advantages for specific
applications, as a whole, this set of tools provides ultimate flexibility for every
environment.
Refer to the following RAID definitions for details.
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 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.
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.
*To build a RAID 10 set, you need to cross-configure Intel
Image , which controls the EZ_RAID connectors for the EZ Backup feature. See
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section "5.4.5 Cross-RAID configuration" for details.
ASUS P5W
ICH7R.
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JMB363 controller, JMicron
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RAID
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ICH7R with Silicon
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5-2