Supero SUPER 370DDE, User Manual

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Chapter 5: The FastTrak 100 RIAD Card (370DDE)
Disk Array Terms
Disk Array Description
A “disk array” is formed from a group of 2 or more disk drives which
appear to the system as a single drive. The advantage of an array is to
provide better throughput performance and/or data fault tolerance.
Better performance is accomplished by sharing the workload in parallel
among multiple physical drives. Fault tolerance is achieved through
data redundant operation where if one (or more) drive fails or has a
sector failure, a mirrored copy of the data can be found on another
drive(s).
For optimal results, select identical Ultra ATA/100 drives to install in
disk arrays. The drives’
matched performance allows the array to
function better as a single drive.
Disk Array Member
The individual disk drives in an array are called “members.” Each
member of a specific disk array is coded in their “reserved sector” with
configuration information that identifies the drive as a member. All disk
members in a formed disk array are recognized as a single physical
drive to the system.
Disk Array Types
For most installations, the FastBuild TM setup “<1> Auto Setup” option
will configure your system.
There are four disk array types in three categories that can be installed
on the FastTrak100 card. Striping is in the Performance category while
Mirroring, Striping/Mirroring are in the Fault Tolerance category.
Spanning (JBOD) is in the Capacity category.
Disk arrays within the Performance and Fault Tolerance categories
conform with the Redundant Array of Independent Disks technology, or
RAID. The RAID levels supported are 0, 1, and 0+1.