Introduction
This section gives a brief introduction on the
proceed to Driver and RAID Software Installation section.
RAID Basics
RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is a method of combining two or more hard disk drives into one logical unit. The advantage of an Array is to provide better performance or data fault tolerance. Fault tolerance is achieved through data redundant operation, where if one drives fails, a mirrored copy of the data can be found on another drive. This can prevent data loss if the operating system fails or hangs. The individual disk drives in an array are called “members”. The configuration information of each member is recorded in the “reserved sector” that identifies the drive as a member. All disk members in a formed disk array are recognized as a single physical drive to the operating system.
Hard disk drives can be combined together through a few different methods. The different methods are referred to as different RAID levels. Different RAID levels represent different performance levels, security levels and implementation costs. The RAID levels which the VIA VT8237 SATA RAID Host Controller supports are RAID 0 and RAID 1. The table below briefly introduced these RAID levels.
RAID Level | No. of Drives | Capacity | Benefits |
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RAID 0 | 2 | Number drives * 2 | Highest performance without data |
(Striping) |
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| protection |
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RAID 1 | 2 | Smallest size | Data protection |
(Mirroring) |
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