5.4VIA RAID configurations

The motherboard includes a high performance IDE RAID controller integrated in the VIA VT8237 southbridge chipset. It supports RAID 0 and RAID 1 with two independent Serial ATA channels.

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.

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Chapter 5: Software support