Understanding Raid Concepts And Terminology - HighPoint RocketRAID 231x User Manual

Introduction
Quick and Background initialization for quick RAID 5 configurations
BIOS boot support (INT13)
Command Line Interface for RAID management (CLI)
Graphical RAID Management Software (RAID Management Console)
Web-based RAID Management Software
Automatic RAID rebuild
SMTP support for email notification
Windows/Win x64, Mac, Linux and FreeBSD support

Understanding RAID Concepts and Terminology

The following concepts and terminology is commonly used when describing the
functions of the RocketRAID 231x Host Adapter cards.
Disk initialization
Initializing a disk writes necessary RAID configuration information to that disk. Disks
must be initialized before configuring them into RAID arrays. The initialization
process will destroy all data on the disk.
Disk Status
New The disk contains no data and has not been initialized.
Initialized The disk has been initialized and can be used for array creation.
Configured The disk has been assigned to one or more arrays, or configured as a
spare disk.
Legacy The disk was used on other controllers before use with the
RocketRAID 231x (see legacy disk below).
Array initialization
A redundant array (RAID5, RAID1, RAID10) needs to be initialized to ensure full
performance and reliability. Non-redundant arrays (RAID0, JBOD) do not need to be
initialized.
When you create a redundant array using the host adapter's BIOS Configuration
Utility, it will create the array in un-initialized state. The initialization process can be
1-2