Software User Guide for Windows*

RAID Features
8 Intel
®
RSTe for Microsoft Windows* OS Software User’s Guide
2.5.5 Hot Spare Disk
Intel
®
RSTe supports the ability to set a drive as a hot spare that can automatically be used to rebuild a
failed or degraded RAID volume without any user interaction. This applies to both the AHCI and SCU
controllers.
2.5.6 Auto Rebuild on Hot Insert
Intel
®
RSTe supports the ability to initiate an automatic RAID rebuild when a physical disk of the
appropriate size is hot inserted into the same directly attached port that the failed drive was removed from.
When configured appropriately, if a RAID volume issue occurs (failure, degradation, or SMART event)
and the questionable drive is hot removed, if a drive of the appropriate size (new or and from an off-line
RAID volume) is hot inserted into that same port, the volume will be rebuilt on the inserted drive.
2.5.7 Manually Invoked Rebuild
Intel
®
RSTe provides a manual method to initiate a RAID volume rebuild if a hot spare has not been
configured or is not available.
2.5.8 RAID SMART Support
Intel
®
RSTe provides support for SMART Alerts for SAS and SATA disks. A SMART drive event
response alert on failure will initiate rebuild to hot spare disk.
2.5.9 RAID-Ready Mode
A RAID-Ready system refers to a system that has been configured to support Intel
®
RSTe. The system
BIOS has the appropriate pre-boot drivers and has been configured for RAID mode. RAID mode can be
either:
 The system is configured to boot off the AHCI controller and it is in RAID mode.
 The system is configured to boot off the SCU controller.
Intel
®
RSTe supports an Intel
®
C600 series chipset based platform configured in RAID-Ready mode.
2.5.10 RAID Volume Creation with Data Preservation
Intel
®
RSTe supports the ability to preserve the data from one of the disks used for the volume creation. A
non-RAID disk can be migrated to a RAID volume while retaining the existing data on that disk.
Note: When creating a system boot volume, the maximum stripe size supported is 128K.
In a RAID-Ready configuration, the user can take the single system drive and turn it into a supported RAID
volume by using the Intel
®
RSTe GUI application. This process does not require the reinstallation of the
operating system. All applications and data remain intact.
The following are examples of RAID level creations supported by Intel
®
RSTe:
 Individual pass-through to 2 16 drives for RAID 0
 Individual pass-through to 2 drive RAID 1
 Individual pass-through to 4 drive RAID 10
 Individual pass-through to 3 to 6 drive RAID 5
2.5.11 Instant Initialization
Intel
®
RSTe allows a newly created volume to be used immediately (no reboot required), protecting newly
written data and creating parity data concurrently.