Rosewill RC201 user manual What Is RAID, BIOS Installation RAID Setting, Package Contents

SATA 150 RAID 2 Port PCI Host RC201 User Manual

1.1.2.High Speed Serial ATA Interface

ƒTwo special shielded and durable SATA1 connectors for plugging more than 1,000 times

ƒDual high speed Serial ATA interface ports, each supporting 1st generation Serial ATA data rates (1.5Gb/s).

ƒProvides RAID 0 (Stripping) to greatly increase the performance of data transfer by simultaneously writing data to 2 drives.

ƒProvides RAID 1 (Mirroring) to protect the data from a disk failure by writing identical data on 2 drives.

ƒFully compliant with Serial ATA 1.0 specifications.

ƒSupports Spread Spectrum in receiver.

ƒIndependent 256-byte FIFOs (32 bit * 64 deep) per Serial ATA channel for host reads and writes.

1.2.Package Contents

ƒSATA RAID 2 Port PCI Host Adapter

ƒUsers Manual

ƒDriver CD

ƒLow profile bracket

2. What Is RAID

RAID or un-RAID function

RC-201 is designed for two functions- a RAID card with RAID 0/1 or an extending card for two SATA devices with un-RAID. The un-RAID installation is the same as the RAID installation as below. The only different is that you won’t need to enter the RAID BIOS to set a RAID structure.

If you want to use RC-201 as a un-RAID card, please do not enter the RAID BIOS and set any RAID set at the beginning of booting. You can jump to P5 directly to complete the driver installation. The only different is ignoring the step of RAID setting and the driver setting is the same as a RAID card.

RAID - Redundant Array of Independent Disks

RAID technology manages multiple disk drives to enhance I/O performance and provide redundancy in order to withstand the failure of any individual member, without loss of data. This card provides two RAID Set types, Striped (RAID 0) and Mirrored (RAID 1).

Disk Striping (RAID 0)

Striping is a performance-oriented, non-redundant data mapping technology. While Striping is discussed as a RAID Set type, it is actually does not provide fault tolerance. With modern SATA bus mastering technology, multiple I/O operations can be done in parallel, enhancing performance. Striping arrays use multiple disks to form a larger virtual disk.

Disk Mirroring (RAID 1)

Disk mirroring creates an identical twin for a selected disk by having the data simultaneously written to two disks. This redundancy provides instantaneous protection from a single disk failure. If a read failure occurs on one drive, the system reads the data from the other drive.

3. BIOS Installation (RAID Setting)

Creating and deleting RAID sets is a function found in the BIOS. During boot up, the RAID setting message will appear and pause for a few moments to allow the user to choose what to do. This board will act as normal NON-RAID card when BIOS not configured for RAID. Just proceed to Software Installation section directly. If you use traditional parallel ATA HDD, make sure your hard drives be set up as master mode before the RAID setting.

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