84 Installing Drives
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Connecting Hard Drives for RAID
Your system supports the following three types of RAID configurations:
• Software RAID on the internal drives — This configuration requires a daughter card.
• Hardware RAID on the internal drives — This configuration requires the CERC SATA RAID
controller.
• Hardware RAID on external SCSI drives and software RAID on the internal drives — This
configuration requires a daughter card and a PERC 4/SC or 4/DC RAID controller card.
NOTE: The RAID configurations (software, hardware/internal, hardware/external) are preinstalled by
Dell and cannot be changed.
Software RAID
Software RAID requires a daughter card to be installed on the system. See "Installing a Daughter
Card."
Hardware RAID (Internal Drives)
Hardware RAID on the internal drives requires that you install the CERC SATA controller. See
"Installing an Expansion Card." A daughter card is not required for this configuration.
Hardware RAID (External Drives) and Software RAID (Internal Drives)
Hardware RAID on external drives requires that you install the PERC 4/SC or 4/DC RAID
controller. See "Installing an Expansion Card." When utilizing hardware RAID on external drives,
you can run only software RAID on the internal drives, which requires a daughter card. See
"Installing a Daughter Card."
NOTE: In a configuration that uses hardware RAID on external drives, the only internal drives you can
use are drive 0 and drive 1. These drives contain the operating system and a mirror of the operating
system, respectively. Do not use these drives to store data.
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