2 RAID technology overview
This chapter defines the terms used in this guide and describes the RAID technologies supported by select HP Business computers.
RAID terminology
Some of the terms in the following table have a broader meaning, but they are defined in relation to the RAID implementation described in this guide.
Term | Definition |
|
|
Fault tolerance | The ability of the computer to continue to operate if one drive fails. Fault tolerance is |
| often used interchangeably with reliability, but the two terms are different. |
|
|
HDD | One physical hard disk drive in the RAID array. |
|
|
Option ROM | A software module inside the system's BIOS that provides extended support for a |
| particular piece of hardware. The RAID option ROM provides boot support for RAID |
| volumes as well as a user interface for managing and configuring the system's RAID |
| volumes. |
|
|
Primary drive | The main internal HDD in the computer. |
|
|
RAID array | The physical drives that appear as one logical drive to the operating system. |
|
|
RAID migration | The change of data from a |
| the change of data from one RAID level to another, is not supported. |
|
|
RAID volume | A fixed amount of space across a RAID array that appears as a single HDD to the |
| operating system. |
|
|
Recovery drive | The hard drive that is the designated mirror (copy of the primary) drive in a RAID 1 and |
| Recovery volume. |
|
|
Reliability | The |
| failure, also known as mean time before failure (MTBF). |
|
|
Stripe | The set of data on a single hard drive in a RAID volume. |
|
|
Striping | The distribution of data over multiple disk drives to improve read/write performance. |
|
|
2 Chapter 2 RAID technology overview
