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VIA VT8237 SATA RAID Setup Guide
Chapter 5
VIA VT8237 SATA RAID Setup Guide
VIA RAID Configurations
The motherboard includes a high performance Serial ATA RAID controller integrated in the
VIA VT8237 Southbridge chipset. It supports RAID 0, RAID 1 and JBOD with two indepen-
dent Serial ATA channels.
RAID:
(Redundant Array of Independent Disk Drives) use jointly several hard drives to
increase data transfer rates and data security. It depends on the number of drives present and
RAID function you select to fulfill the seurity or performance pruposes or both.
RAID 0
(called data striping) optimizes two identical hard disk drives to read and write data
in parallel, interleaved stacks. Two hard disks perform the same work as a single drive but at
a sustained data transfer rate, double that of a single disk alone, thus improving data access
and storage.
RAID 1
(called data mirroring) copies and maintains an identical image of data from one
drive to a second drive. If one drive fails, the disk array management software directs all
applications to the surviving drive as it contains a complete copy of the data in the other
drive. This RAID configuration provides data protection and increases fault tolerance to
the entire system.
JBOD:
(Just a Bunch of Drives) Also known as “Spanning”. Two or more hard drives are
required. Several hard disk types configured as a single hard disk. The hard drives are simply
hooked up in series. This expands the capacity of your drive and results in a useable total
capacity. However, JBOD will not increase any performance or data security.
Install the Serial ATA (SATA) hard disks
The VIA VT8237 Southbridge chipset supports Serial ATA hard disk drives. For optimal
performance, install identical drives of the same model and capacity when creating a RAID
set.
•
If you are creating a RAID 0 (striping) array of performance, use two new
drives.
•
If you are creating a RAID 1 (mirroring) array for protection, you can use two
new drives or use an existing drive and a new drive (the new drive must be
of the same size or larger than the existing drive). If you use two drives of
different sizes, the smaller capacity hard disk will be the base storage size.
For example, one hard disk has an 80GB storage capacity and the other hard
disk has 60GB storage capacity, the maximum storage capacity for the RAID
1 set is 60GB.
Follow these steps to install the SATA hard disks for RAID configuration.
i
Before setting up your new RAID array, verify the status of your hard disks.
Make sure the Master/Slave jumpers are configured properly.
ii
Both the data and power SATA cables are new cables. You cannot use older 40-pin
80-conductor IDE or regular IDE power cables with Serial ATA drives. Installing
Serial ATA (SATA) hard disks require the use of new Serial ATA cable (4-conduc-
tor) which supports the Serial ATA protocol and a Serial ATA power cable.
iii
Either end of the Serial ATA data cable can be connected to the SATA hard disk or
the SATA connector on the motherboard.
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