5.5RAID 0/RAID 1 Configurations

The motherboard includes the Silicon Image Sil 3112A controller chipset and two Serial ATA interfaces to support Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) configuration. This feature supports Serial ATA hard disks.

Use the SATARaid™ utility to configure the RAID sets.

RAID 0 (called data striping) optimizes two identical hard disk drives to read and write data in parallel, interleaved stacks. Two hard disks perform the same work as a single drive but at a sustained data transfer rate, double that of a single disk alone, thus improving data access and storage.

RAID 1 (called data mirroring) copies and maintains an identical image of data from one drive to a second drive. If one drive fails, the disk array management software directs all applications to the surviving drive as it contains a complete copy of the data in the other drive. This RAID configuration provides data protection and increases fault tolerance to the entire system.

For more information about the Silicon Image Sil 3112A SATA RAID controller, refer to the Silicon Image SATA RAID User’s Manual found in “\Drivers\SATA\SATARaid_Manual_Rev092.PDF” of the motherboard support CD.

5.5.1 Install the hard disks

The Sil 3112A chipset supports Serial ATA hard disk drives. For optimal performance, install identical drives of the same model and capacity when creating RAID sets.

•If you are creating a RAID 0 (striping) array for perfomance, use two new drives.

•If you are creating a RAID 1 (mirroring) array for protection, you can use two new drives or use an existing drive and a new drive (the new drive must be of the same size or larger than the existing drive). If you use two drives with different sizes, the smaller capacity hard disk will be the base storage size. For example, hard disk A with an 80 GB storage capacity and hard disk B with 60 GB storage capacity, the maximum storage capacity for your RAID 1 set will be 60 GB.

ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe motherboard

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