FastTrak TX4000 User Manual
Disk Array Terms
Disk Array Description
A disk array is formed from a group of two or more disk drives that appear to the system as a single drive. The advantage of an array is to provide better throughput performance and/or data fault tolerance.
Better performance is accomplished by sharing the workload among multiple physical drives.
Fault tolerance is achieved through data redundancy operation where if one (or more) drive fails or has a sector failure, a mirrored copy of the data can be found on another drive(s).
For optimal results, select identical Ultra ATA/133 drives to install in disk arrays. The drives’ matched performance allows the array to function better as a single drive.
Disk Array Member
The individual disk drives in an array are called members. Each member of a specific disk array has coded in its reserved sector configuration information that identifies the drive as a member. All disk members in a formed disk array are recognized as a single physical drive to the system.
Disk Array Types
For most installations, the FastBuild setup Auto Setup (1) option will configure your system.
There are three disk array types in two categories that can be installed on the FastTrak TX4000 card. Striping is in the Performance category while Mirroring, Striping/Mirroring are in the Fault Tolerance category.
Disk arrays within the Performance and Fault Tolerance categories conform to the Redundant Array of Independent Disks technology, or RAID. The RAID levels supported are 0, 1, and 0+1.
RAID Level | Performance | Fault | Capacity | No. of | |
Tolerance | Drives | ||||
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RAID 0 | Highest | No | No. Drives x | 2 to 4 | |
(Striping) | Smallest Size | ||||
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RAID 1 | Normal | Yes | Smallest Size Drive | 2 | |
(Mirroring) | |||||
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RAID 0+1 | High | Yes | 2X Smallest Size | 4 | |
(Stripe/Mirror) | Drive | ||||
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