Areca ARC-1120, ARC-1110, ARC-1130, ARC-1231ML/1261ML/1280ML manual Stagger Power on

WEB BROWSER-BASED CONFIGURATION

Allow Read Ahead (Default: Enabled)—When Enabled, the drive’ s read ahead cache algorithm is used, providing maximum performance under most circumstances.

•Stagger Power on

In a PC system with only one or two drives, the power can supply enough power to spin up both drives simultaneously. But in systems with more than two drives, the startup current from spinning up the drives all at once can overload the power supply, causing damage to the power supply, disk drives and other system components. This damage can be avoided by allowing the host to stagger the spin-up of the drives. New SATA drives have support staggered spin-up capabilities to boost reliability. Staggered spin-up is a very useful feature for managing multiple disk drives in a storage subsystem. It gives the host the ability to spin up the disk drives sequentially or in groups, allowing the drives to come ready at the optimum time without straining the system power supply. Staggering drive spin-up in a multiple drive environment also avoids the extra cost of a power supply designed to meet short-term startup power demand as well as steady state conditions.

Areca has supported the fixed value staggered power up function in its previous version firmware. But from firmware version

1.39and later, SATA RAID controller has included the option for customer to select the disk drives sequentially stagger power up value. The values can be selected from 0.4ms to 6ms per step which powers up one drive.

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