Dell 745N manual Connecting Hard Drives for RAID, Software RAID, Hardware RAID Internal Drives

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Connecting Hard Drives for RAID

Your system supports the following three types of RAID configurations:

•Software RAID on the internal drives — This configuration requires a daughter card.

•Hardware RAID on the internal drives — This configuration requires the CERC SATA RAID controller.

•Hardware RAID on external SCSI drives and software RAID on the internal drives — This configuration requires a daughter card and a PERC 4/SC or 4/DC RAID controller card.

NOTE: The RAID configurations (software, hardware/internal, hardware/external) are preinstalled by Dell and cannot be changed.

Software RAID

Software RAID requires a daughter card to be installed on the system. See "Installing a Daughter Card."

Hardware RAID (Internal Drives)

Hardware RAID on the internal drives requires that you install the CERC SATA controller. See "Installing an Expansion Card." A daughter card is not required for this configuration.

Hardware RAID (External Drives) and Software RAID (Internal Drives)

Hardware RAID on external drives requires that you install the PERC 4/SC or 4/DC RAID controller. See "Installing an Expansion Card." When utilizing hardware RAID on external drives, you can run only software RAID on the internal drives, which requires a daughter card. See "Installing a Daughter Card."

NOTE: In a configuration that uses hardware RAID on external drives, the only internal drives you can use are drive 0 and drive 1. These drives contain the operating system and a mirror of the operating system, respectively. Do not use these drives to store data.

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Installing Drives