AHCI and RAID on HP Compaq Elite 8000, 8100, 8200, and 8300 Business PCs - Technical White Paper

Basics of AHCI and RAID Technology

Definitions

Table 2: Basic AHCI and RAID Definitions

Acronym or term Description

AHCI Advanced Host Controller Interface, a specification for hardware and software, is a register interface for

SATA, intended to add higher speed, NCQ and other features.

ATA Advanced Technology Attachment.

BIOS Basic Input/Output System, also known as system ROM.

Chipset Term used to define a collection of integrated components required to make a PC function.

HDD Hard disk drive

ICH

The Input/Output Controller Hub. This component includes the mass storage controller. ICH is part of the

Intel Q45 Chipset

IDE Integrated Drive Electronics

INF

Information file (.inf) used by Microsoft

® operating systems that support the Plug & Play feature. When

installing a driver, this file provides the operating system needed, information about driver filenames,

driver components, and supported hardware.

Migration Term used to describe the movement of data from one configuration or usage model to another.

NCQ Native Command Queuing.

OS Operating system

Option ROM

Piece or software module inside the System BIOS which provides extended support for a particular piece

of hardware. The RAID Option ROM provides boot support for RAID volumes as well as a user interface

for managing and configuring the system's RAID volumes.

PCH

Platform Controller Hub. This component includes the mass storage controller. PCH is part of the Intel

Q57/Q67/Q77 chipset

PCI Peripheral Components Interface.

PCIe PCI express. A serial version of PCI.

PnP Plug and Play

RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks.

ROM Read Only Memory.

SATA Serial ATA

Strip Set of data on a single hard drive in a RAID 0 volume.

Stripe Group of all strips going horizontally across all the hard drive members of a RAID volume.

UEFI

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface. Specification defining firmware (BIOS and/or option ROM) that

initializes hardware subsystems before the OS boot process.