5.4RAID configurations

The motherboard comes with four Serial ATA RAID solutions:

•ASUS EZ-Backup.Enabled by Silicon Image’s SiI4723 controller, ASUS

EZ‑Backup provides ready-to-go hardware RAID for plug-and play RAID 1 and easy‑to‑configure RAID 0 sets of two hard disk drives

•Intel® ICH7R Southbridge RAID provides RAID level 5 support for three or more hard disk drives.

•Cross-RAIDallows you to build a RAID 10 set through a cross‑configuration of

ASUS EZ-Backup and Intel® ICH7R.

•JMicron® RAID. Enabled by JMicron® JMB363 controller, JMicron® RAID extends the advantages of software RAID beyond internal hard disk drives to an external disk or external, port-multiplier enabled enclosure

While individually the RAID implementations offer advantages for specific applications, as a whole, this set of tools provides ultimate flexibility for every environment.

Refer to the following RAID definitions for details.

RAID 0 (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. Use of two new identical hard disk drives is required for this setup.

RAID 1 (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. Use two new drives or use an existing drive and a new drive for this setup. The new drive must be of the same size or larger than the existing drive.

RAID 5 stripes both data and parity information across three or more hard disk drives. Among the advantages of RAID 5 configuration include better HDD performance, fault tolerance, and higher storage capacity. The RAID

5 configuration is best suited for transaction processing, relational database applications, enterprise resource planning, and other business systems. Use a minimum of three identical hard disk drives for this setup.

RAID 10* is data striping and data mirroring combined without parity (redundancy data) having to be calculated and written. With the RAID 10* configuration you get all the benefits of both RAID 0 and RAID 1 configurations. Use four new hard disk drives or use an existing drive and three new drives for this setup.

*To build a RAID 10 set, you need to cross-configure Intel® ICH7R with Silicon Image®, which controls the EZ_RAID connectors for the EZ Backup feature. See section “5.4.5 Cross-RAID configuration” for details.

ASUS P5W DH Deluxe

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