Controller
This setting affects how the BIOS reads the disk drives for the boot partition. Drive geometries can be toggled between 8 GB and 2 GB. The default is 2 GB. When the drive geometry is changed, the drive should be formatted at the operating system level.
Caution
Changing this setting after data has been stored will make the data unreadable. If you have already configured your array and have stored data, you should not change this setting.
The default BIOS geometry of the controller is set to 2 GB. This means that the BIOS can only access the first 2 GB of any drive that has been configured on the controller. This is adequate in most applications, since BIOS is only used to boot the operating system. However, it does mean the operating system must be installed in the first 2 GB of the capacity of the configured drive. If this is not adequate, the BIOS geometry can be changed to 8 GB, allowing the BIOS to access the first 8 GB of capacity.
As a rule of thumb, select 8 GB geometry if the following two cases apply:
1.You have a system (RAID) drive that is greater than 2.145 GB in capacity.
2.The DOS/Windows compatible partitions could be located in an area above the first 2.145 GB.
Otherwise the 2 GB option is fine.
Manual No. 775051 |