Introduction - MSI MS-7666 User Manual

Intel RAID Intel RAID

Introduction

The mainboard comes with the Intel RAID controller that allows you to configure SATA
hard drives as RAID sets.
SATA hard drives deliver blistering transfer speeds up to 3 Gb/s. Serial ATA uses long,
thin cables, making it easier to connect your drive and improving the airflow inside your
PC. The most outstanding features are:
1. Supports 3 Gb/s transfers with CRC error checking.
2. Supports Hot-plug-n-play feature.
3. Data handling optimizations including tagged command queuing, elevator seek and
packet chain command.
Intel RAID controller offers RAID level 0 (Striping), RAID level 1 (Mirroring and Duplex-
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ing), RAID level 5 (Block Interleaved Distributed Parity), RAID level 10 (A Stripe of Mir-
rors) , Intel Martix Storage Technology and Intel
®
RAID 0 breaks the data into blocks which are written to separate hard drives. Spread-
ing the hard drive I/O load across independent channels greatly improves I/O perfor-
mance.
RAID 1 provides data redundancy by mirroring data between the hard drives and pro-
vides enhanced read performance.
RAID 5 Provides data striping at the byte level and also stripe error correction informa-
tion. This results in excellent performance and good fault tolerance. Level 5 is one of the
most popular implementations of RAID.
RAID 10 Not one of the original RAID levels, multiple RAID 1 mirrors are created, and a
RAID 0 stripe is created over these.
Intel Matrix RAID Technology is the advanced ability for two RAID volumes to share the
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combined space of two hard drives being used in unison.
Intel Rapid Recover Technology utilizes RAID 1 functionality to copy data from a des-
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ignated Master drive to a designated Recovery drive. The size of the Master drive must
be less than or equal to the size of the Recovery drive. When a Recovery volume is
created, complete capacity of the Master drive will be used as the Master volume. Only
one Recovery Volume can exist on a system. There are 2 methods of updating the
data on the Master to the Recovery drive. They are Continuous Update Policy and On
Request Update Policy.
Important
The least number of hard drives for RAID 0, RAID 1, Recovery or Matrix mode is 2. The
least number of hard drives for RAID 10 mode is 4. And the least number of hard drives
for RAID 5 mode is 3.
All the information/ volumes/ pictures listed in your system might differ from the illustra-
tions in this appendix.
B-2
Rapid Recover Technology.
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