User guide
6-2
Chapter 6: RAID conguration
6.1 Setting up RAID
The motherboards come with either an Intel
®
C224 controller (P9D-M) or Intel
®
C222 controller
(P9D-MV and P9D-MX) that supports Intel
®
Rapid Storage Technology enterprise Option
ROM Utility with RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10, and RAID 5 support (for Windows
®
OS only).
6.1.1 RAIDdenitions
RAID 0
(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.
Use of two new identical hard disk drives is required for this setup.
RAID 1
(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
conguration provides data protection and increases fault tolerance to the entire system. Use
two new drives or use an existing drive and a new drive for this setup. The new drive must be
of the same size or larger than the existing drive.
RAID 10 is data striping and data mirroring combined without parity (redundancy data) having
to be calculated and written. With the RAID 10 conguration you get all the benets of both
RAID 0 and RAID 1 congurations. Use four new hard disk drives or use an existing drive and
three new drives for this setup.
RAID 5 stripes both data and parity information across three or more hard disk drives. Among
the advantages of RAID 5 conguration include better HDD performance, fault tolerance, and
higher storage capacity. The RAID 5 conguration is best suited for transaction processing,
relational database applications, enterprise resource planning, and other business systems.
Use a minimum of three identical hard disk drives for this setup.
If you want to boot the system from a hard disk drive included in a created RAID set, copy the
RAID driver rst from the support DVD to a oppy disk before you install an operating system
to the selected hard disk drive.