Ness Pro series User Manual page 13

Figure F. BIOS Initialization Screen for RAID 5
Select striping size
For a RAID 0 or RAID 10 configuration select the striping size. Sizes of 64K,
128K, 256K, 512K or 1M are selected using the Stripe Size box shown in Figure
D. RAID 5 only allows a 64K stripe size. RAID 1 does not allow the user to select
the striping size.
Select write cache properties
The PRO 16/8 RAID DVR gives you a choice of disabling the write cache for your
disk arrays. Write cache is used to store data locally on the drive before it is
written to the disk, allowing the system to continue with its next task. Enabling the
write cache results in the most efficient access times for your system. There may
be instances when you always want the system to wait for the drive to write all
the data to disk before going on to its next task. For this case, you must disable
the write cache. To disable the write cache, select disable from the array's Write
Cache State selection. The default for Write Cache State is enable.
Confirm array configuration
Select the OK button to confirm creating the array or Cancel to reject it. The
array is not actually created and no data will be overwritten until you have
finished making all your changes and select the F8 key. The current limitation is
2TB for any physical or logical unit. If you attempt to create an array over 2TB the
BIOS will display the following message:
"The amount of disk space available exceeds the maximum allowable capacity.
The array capacity will be limited to 2 TB."
For RAID 5 Arrays
Because of the Read-Modify-Write operations, zeros are first written to all drives
in the array before the array is functional. The screen shown in Figure F appears
after selecting OK to confirm array creation. If desired, the write-zeros operation
can be aborted by rebooting the system. Once booted to the operating system,
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