3Ware 3W-7410 - Escalade 7410 RAID Controller, Manual

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Determining your configuration
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want the computer 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 fin-
ished making all your changes and select the
F8 key.
Note:
The current limitation is 2 TB for any physical or logical
unit. If you attempt to create an array over 2 TB the BIOS will dis-
play the following message:
“The amount of disk space available exceeds the maximum allow-
able 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 15 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, the array goes into initialization mode
after a delay of up to ten minutes. The advantage of doing this is that the
RAID 5 can be used immediately, although it will not be fault tolerant until
the initialization is complete. The disadvantage of doing this is that it will take
longer for the array to be fully redundant, as it takes longer to initialize an
array than it takes to write zeros to the array.
Caution:
When running in initializing mode the array is not redundant. You
cannot remove any drive.
For RAID 1 or 10 Arrays
RAID 1 and 10 arrays are not profiled when created, or initialized after boot-
ing into the OS. When the firmware receives the first verify request, given
that the array was never initialized, the initialization will then begin. Any sub-
sequent verify operations will then perform the verification of the array
(check data consistency). An AEN will inform the user that the first verify
will be preceded by an initialization.