User manual SATA RAID 5

[. . . ] SATA RAID (RAID 5) Function (Only for chipset Sil3114 used) User's Manual 12ME-SI3114R-002 Table of Contents 1 WELCOME . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1. 1 SATARAID5 FEATURES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1. 2 FOR SATARAID USERS UPGRADING TO SATARAID5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1. 2. 1 RAID FUNCTION LIST FOR DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF BIOS AND RAID DRIVER. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [. . . ] Rebuild RAID 1 Set is used to initiate the rebuild of a RAID 1 set after, for example, a drive in the Group has been replaced. Resolve Conflicts is used to automatically find the member drives of a RAID set which has been disrupted (physical drives swapped around, for example) and restore the Set to proper operation. Low Level Format allows a single drive to have its data completely wiped out. Drives assigned to Sets or allocated as spares cannot be low level formatted. Logical Drive Info shows the current configuration of each RAID set, allocated spare, and unallocated physical drive attached to the SATA host adapter. These operations are detailed in the pages that follow. Help Window This window displays context-sensitive help and status messages. Physical Drive Information This window displays the model number and capacities of the drives physically attached to the SATA host adapter. Logical Drive Information This window displays all logical drives connected to the controller. The upper part lists RAID sets and JBOD drives reported to the system BIOS. The lower part lists spare drives, reserved drives, conflict drives, and invalid drives not reported to the system BIOS. Command Line The bottom line of the display lists the currently active command keys: Up and Down arrows select the menu item or action ESC takes the user to the previous menu Enter selects the highlighted choice Ctrl-E exits the utility Other keys may be active depending upon the currently selected action. SATARAID5 User' Manual s 13 6. 1 Creating RAID Groups As previously discussed, the Silicon Image SATA host adapter supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, and JBOD configurations. The selection of the RAID level to be used should be based upon factors including performance, data security, and number of drives available. It is best to carefully consider the long-term role of the system and plan the data storage strategy appropriately. Silicon Image has made the creation of RAID sets very simple. They can be created either automatically or to allow the greatest flexibility, manually. Select "Create RAID set" Choose a RAID 0 Striped, a RAID 1 Mirrored, a RAID 5 Parity, or a RAID 10 combination set. 3. Select Automatically or Manually configuration of the RAID Set. Single SATARAID5 User' Manual s 14 4. 6. If manual configuration is selected, the chunk size of Striped Sets can be selected. For Mirrored Sets, the Source and Target drives can be selected. If auto configuration is selected, BIOS will select RAID member drives automatically and the chunk size of Striped Sets is set to 64KB. See section 6. 9 for explanation on selecting size. 7. 8. After the RAID set size is set, the message "Are You Sure?" will display before completing the configuration. Answer "N" to abort the creation of the new RAID set, or "Y" to proceed with the RAID set creation. RAID sets can be created in both BIOS and in the SATARaid5 GUI. If you have excess capacity left on your hard drives after creating a RAID set in the BIOS, you can later go to the SATARaid5 GUI to create additional logical drives that fully utilize the capacity on all your hard drives. 6. 2 Creating Spare Drive If there is a RAID 1/RAID 5/RAID 10 set, spare drive can be created. [. . . ] If no other RAID sets are to be created, then click Cancel to exit the RAID creation window. Go to the Disk Management Utility in Windows to initialize and format the newly created RAID set. Please refer to Chapter 7 Allocating Partitions in Windows for instructions on initialization and formatting. SATARAID5 User' Manual s 38 Example 1 Example 2 In Example 1, a RAID 0 (striped) array called Volume A ­ RAID Group 0 with capcity of 2GB with 32KB chunk size (stripe size) with rebuild priority 10 is created over hard drive 0 and 1 In Example 2, a RAID 10 (mirrored striped) array called Volume A- RAID Group 0 with capcity of 2GB with 32KB chunk size (stripe size) with rebuild priority of 8 is created over hard drive 0, 1, 2, and 3. SATARAID5 User' Manual s 39 8. 2. 9 Rebuild RAID Group This command displays a dialog box to let user choose a replacement segment to rebuild a non-fault tolerant RAID group. 8. 2. 10 Delete RAID Group This command displays a dialog box to let user choose RAID groups to delete. SATARAID5 User' Manual s 40 8. 2. 11 RAID Group Summary This command displays a dialog box to show all RAID groups'group ID, configuration, and status. The RAID Group Summary window has it' own menu bar. All options available via the menu bar are shown below s File Exit Options Sorting. . . [. . . ]