Introduction - MSI A88X-G43 Series User Manual

Introduction

The motherboard comes with the AMD RAID controller that allows you to configure
SATA hard drives as RAID sets.
AMD RAID controller offers RAID level 0 (Striping), RAID level 1 (Mirroring and
Duplexing), RAID level 5 (Block Interleaved Distributed Parity), RAID level 10 (A Stripe
of Mirrors) , Volume (JBOD) and RAIDABLE.
RAID0 breaks the data into blocks which are written to separate hard drives.
Spreading the hard drive I/O load across independent channels greatly improves I/O
performance.
RAID1 provides data redundancy by mirroring data between the hard drives and
provides enhanced read performance.
RAID5 Provides data striping at the byte level and also stripe error correction
information. This results in excellent performance and good fault tolerance. Level 5 is
one of the most popular implementations of RAID.
RAID10 Not one of the original RAID levels, multiple RAID1 mirrors are created, and a
RAID0 stripe is created over these.
Volume (JBOD) provides the ability to link-together storage from one or several disks,
regardless of the size of the space on those disks, and Volume is useful in scavenging
space on disks unused by other disks in the array. Volume does not provide
performance benefits or data redundancy, and disk failure will result in data loss.
RAIDABLE allows a RAIDABLE disk to be transformed later to RAID0 or RAID1.
Important
The least number of hard drives for RAID 0 or RAID 1 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
illustrations in this appendix.
Use the utility to accomplish the procedures:
■ Initialize Disk(s) - To initialize a new disk drive for data storage.
■ Create Array - Create arrays at different RAID levels (depending on the
license level for the system)
■ Delete Array(s) - Delete an array.
■ Swap Two Arrays - Change the array order, especially for the AMD-RAID
bootable array.
■ Manage Hot Sqare(s) - Allows selection of global and dedicated hot spares.
■ View Disk Details - View information about each disk.
■ View Array Details - View information about each array.
■ Rescan All Channels - Rescan all channels to detect new or removed disks
and arrays.
■ Controller Options - Change INT13 boot support, turn off Critical arrays or
warning for Offline arrays while booting, or change the number of disks that
can be spun-up when the system is powered-on.
■ Contiune to Boot - Exit the BIOS Configuration Utility and continue booting the
system.
AMD RAID B-2