Mainboard K8NF4X–754
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Appendix II: RAID Setup
Introduction to RAID
RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) technology is a sophisticated disk
management system that manages multiple disk drives. It enhances I/O performance and
provides redundancy in order to prevent the loss of data in case of individual disk failure. The
RAID facility on this board provides RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and RAID SPAN. The total
number of drives you can apply depends on the number of connectors on your board. A
board with 2 PATA connectors and 4 SATA connectors can connect up to 8 drives (4 PATA
drives and 4 SATA drives). However one of the PATA drives may be used for the CD-ROM
drive, in which case the maximum number of drives will be 5. The descriptions below are
based on 2 PATA connectors and 4 SATA connectors.
Disk Striping (RAID 0)
Striping is a performance-oriented, non-redundant disk storage technology. With RAID
striping, multiple disks are used to form a larger virtual disk. Data is then striped or mapped
across all the physical disks. In this way, multiple I/O operations can be executed in parallel,
enhancing performance. Striping does not provide fault tolerance. The minimum number of
hard drives for RAID 0 is 2.
Disk Mirroring (RAID 1)
With Disk Mirroring there are redundant disks that mirror the primary disks. Data that is
written to the primary disks are also written to the redundant disks. This redundancy provides
fault tolerant protection from a single disk failure. If a read/write failure occurs on one drive,
the system can still read and write data using the other drive. The minimum number of drives
for a RAID 1 configuration is 2. You are required to use an even number of drives.
Disk St Mirroring (RAID 0+1)
This mode combines both the performance benefits of RAID 0 with the fault tolerance of
RAID 1. The minimum number of drives for RAID 0+1 configuration is 4 drives. This
configuration also requires an even number of drives.
Note:
All mirrored configurations or
striped/mirrored configurations should use drives of the same size.
RAID SPAN
RAID SPAN allows JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) configurations which simply uses multiple
disks to form a larger virtual disk without any other specialized disk management
functionality. RAID SPAN is not considered a standard RAID implementation.
Before create RAID Array
Before you configure your RAID Array, you have to enable the “RAID config” option in the
BIOS Setup Utility.
1. After you boot your system, press the “Del” key when prompted to enter the BIOS Setup
Utility.
2. The “RAID config” option for enabling RAID will be found on the “Peripherals” screen as
part of the “IDE Function Setup” section shown as below-left (Peripherals >> IDE Function
Setup >> RAID config). Arrow down to the IDE RAID item and press enter.
3.On the “RAID config” screen (shown below-right), enable the disks that you want to use as
RAID disks (in this example there are four SATA hard drives configured as RAID disks).
