Abit BE6R2-20 User Manual

HPT370 RAID Controller Guide

Index

1. Introduction of RAID.................1

1-1. What is RAID? ............................. 1

1-2. Why RAID?..................................2

1-3. The RAID levels...........................2

1-4. Which RAID level should I use?..4

2. The features of RAID on this

motherboard ...............................5

2-1. Setting up RAID on this

motherboard..................................5

2-2. The BIOS setting menu ................ 6

3. Software installation.................10

3-1. DOS............................................10

3-2. Windows 9x................................10

3-3. Windows NT 4.0 ........................12

3-4. Windows 2000............................14

MN-171-2K0-39
Rev. 2.00

Copyright and Warranty Notice:

The information in this document is subject to change
without notice and does not represent a commitment on
part of the vendor, who assumes no liability or
responsibility for any errors that may appear in this
manual.

No warranty or representation, either expressed or
implied, is made with respect to the quality, accuracy or
fitness for any particular part of this document. In no
event shall the manufacturer be liable for direct, indirect,
special, incidental or consequential damages arising from
any defect or error in this manual or product.

Product names appearing in this manual are for
identification purpose only and trademarks and product
names or brand names appearing in this document are the
property of their respective owners.

This document contains materials protected under
International Copyright Laws. All rights reserved. No part
of this document may be reproduced, transmitted or
transcribed without the expressed written permission of
the manufacturer and authors of this document.

If you do not properly set the settings of this product,
causing this product to malfunction or fail, we cannot
guarantee any responsibility.

1. Introduction of RAID

Thank you for purchasing ABIT’s latest motherboard with RAID function. Please read this guide as a
reference for setting up the RAID BIOS and installing the driver software of this motherboard. This
motherboard uses the HighPoint 370 controller which allows for RAID.

1-1. What is RAID?

RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive/Independent Disks) technology was developed to offer a
combination of outstanding data availability, excellent performance, and high capacity that one single
disk drive can not meet up with. A RAID array is defined as two or more disks grouped together to appear
as one single device to the host system, which can tolerate the failure of a drive without losing data, and
which can operate independently from each other.

To manage MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) and prevent any single drive failure causing data loss
within an array, UC Berkeley scientists proposed five types of redundant array architectures, defining
them as RAID levels 1 through 5. Each RAID level has its own strengths and weaknesses, and is well

HPT370 RAID Controller Guide

1

2

suited for certain types of applications and computing environments. RAID 1, RAID 3 and RAID 5 of
these five types are commonly used. RAID 2 and RAID 4 do not offer any significant advantages over
these other types. RAID 3 is designed for single-user or data-intensive environments, such as imaging or
data acquisition that access extremely large sequential records. This leaves RAID 1 and RAID 5 as the
RAID levels is applicable for networked and transaction processing-based environments utilizing
NetWare, Windows NT, Unix, and OS/2.

In addition to these five redundant array architectures, it has become popular to refer to a non-redundant
array of disk drives as RAID 0 array.

1-2. Why RAID?

Data security is a very important issue for system administrators. They have to adopt efficient methods of
data protection to guard against potential losses due to drive failures. Tape-based backups are used to be
one solution for data security, but this method is becoming a task more difficult. Slow, cumbersome tape
backup solutions lose their effectiveness for servers and workstations.

RAID technology is another solution for data security. There are a number of factors responsible for the
growing adoption of arrays for critical network storage. Because today’s applications create larger files,
the need for network storage has proportionately increased. To accommodate expanding storage
requirements, users are adding disk drives --- raising the probability of drive failures. In addition, the
development of CPU speed has exceeded data transfer rates to storage media, causing I/O bottlenecks for
networking application.

RAID technology overcomes these challenges by providing a combination of outstanding data availability,
extraordinary and highly scalable performance, as well as high capacity. RAID provides real-time data
rebuild when a disk drive fails, increasing system uptime and network availability, while protecting
against the loss of data. Multiple drives working together also increases system performance.

1-3. The RAID levels

RAID Level 0:

.
.
.

Block D

Block C

Block B

Block A

Striped Disk Array without Fault Tolerance

RAID 0 is typically defined as a non-redundant collection
of striped disk drives. It doesn’t provide data protection
but it offers very high data throughput, especially for large
files.

RAID 0 does not deliver any fault tolerance. All data is
lost if any drive in the array fails. It is intended for non­critical data requiring high performance. Simply put,
RAID 0 splits the information in two, with half of the
information going to each hard disk. Thus, performance
is quickened by this approach.

Block A

Block C

Block E

Block G

Block B

Block D

Block F

etc …

Disk 0 Disk 1

ABIT Computer Corporation

y

y

y

y

RAID Level 1

Block D

Block C

Block B

Block A

Block A

Block B

Block C

Block D

Mirror

!!!!

Block A

Block B

Block C

Block D

Disk 0 Disk 1

RAID Level 2

Block D
Block C

Block B

Block A

A 0

B 0

C 0

D 0

Disk 0 Disk1 Disk 2 Disk3

A 1

B 1

C 1

D 1

A 2

Hamming

B 2

C 2

D 2

Code

Mirroring and Duplexing

RAID 1 provides 100% redundancy by mirroring one
drive to another one. In the event of a disk drive failure,
the array controller will automatically switch the
read/write activity to another drive.

Each individual drive can execute simultaneous read
operations. Mirroring thus doubles the read performance
of a single drive and leaves the write performance
unchanged.

RAID 1 is a good entry-level redundant system, since only
two drives are required. However, the cost of RAID 1 is
higher because one drive has to be used to store duplicate
data.

Disk Striping with error-correction code
(ECC)

RAID 2, which uses Hamming error correction codes, is
intended for use with drives which do not have built-in
error detection. Because the check method of Hamming
code is very complicated, and more than one drive is
required to store ECC information, RAID 2 offers no
significant advantages over RAID 3.

….

RAID Level 3

Block D

Block C

Block B
Block A

A 0

B 0

C 0

D 0

Disk 0 Disk1 Disk 2 Disk3

A 1

B 1

C 1

D 1

HPT370 RAID Controller Guide

Parallel transfer with parity

RAID 3 uses a separate drive to store parity and stripes
data on a byte-by-byte basis across all of the data disks in
the array.

A Parit

B Parit

C Parit

D Parit

Stripe 0, 1, 2
Parity

Stripe 2Stripe 1Stripe 0

A 2

B 2

C 2

D 2

Because each I/O accesses all drives in the array, RAID 3
does not support multiple, simultaneous read/write
requests. It is optimized for large, sequential data requests.

3

y

y

y

y

y

y

y

RAID Level 4

DATA

ABCD

Independent Data disks with shared parity
disk

RAID 4 is identical to RAID 3 except the block level
stripes are used.

RAID 4 supports multiple simultaneous read requests.
However, since all write operations require that parity data
to be updated each time, they can not be overlapped. And
so the RAID 4 offers no significant advantages over
RAID5.

Block 2Block 1Block 0

A 0

B 0

C 0

D 0

Disk 0 Disk1 Disk 2 Disk3

A 1

B 1

C 1

D 1

A 2

B 2

C 2

D 2

A Parit

B Parit

C Parity

D Parit

Block 0, 1, 2
Parity

RAID Level 5

DATA

ABCD

Independent Data disks with distributed
parity blocks

RAID 5 also stripes data at a block level across several
drives. But it distributes parity among the drives, this
avoids the write bottleneck caused by the single dedicated

D BlockC BlockB BlockA Block

A 0

A 1

A 2

3 Parit

2 Parit

B 0

B 1

B 3

C 0

1 Parit

C 2

C 3

0 Parit

D 1

D 2

D 3

parity drive. Each drive takes turns storing parity
information for a different series of stripes. RAID 5 can
execute read/write to disk drives either in parallel or
independently.

Disk 0 Disk1 Disk 2 Disk3

1-4. Which RAID level should I use?

Many different disk array configurations are possible, depending on end-user requirements and the goals
of the manufacturer. Each controller design has a different functionality to accomplish specific
performance and data availability goals. Therefore, no individual RAID level is inherently superior to any
other. Each of the five array architectures is well suited for certain types of applications and computing
environments. The follow table summarizes the strengths and weaknesses of each RAID level.

RAID

RAID 0 2

RAID 1 2

Level

Min. No.
of Drives

Description Characteristics / Strengths Weaknesses

Striped Disk

"

Array without
Fault Tolerance
Mirroring and

"

Duplexing

Highest I/O Performance

"

Very simple design

"

Easy to implement

"

100% redundancy of data

"

Twice the Read transaction rate of a

"

single disk, same Write transaction rate
as single a disk
Simplest RAID storage subsystem

"

design

4

ABIT Computer Corporation

No redundancy

"

One drive fails,
all data is lost
High

"

redundancy
cost overhead

5

RAID 2 Not used

in LAN

RAID 3 3

RAID 4 3

RAID 5 3

Disk Striping

"

with error­correction code
(ECC)

Parallel transfer

"

with parity

Independent

"

Data disks with
shared parity
disk

Independent

"

Data disks with
distributed
parity blocks

Previously used for RAM error

"

environments correction (known as
Hamming Code) and in disk drives
before the use of embedded error
correction
Very high Read data transfer rate

"

Very high Write data transfer rate

"

Excellent performance for large,

"

sequential data requests
Low ratio of ECC (Parity) disks to data

"

disks means high efficiency

Very high Read data transaction rate

"

High aggregate Read transfer rate

"

Low ratio of ECC (Parity) disks to data

"

disks means high efficiency

Highest Read data transaction rate

"

Medium Write data transaction rate

"

Best cost/performance for transaction-

"

oriented networks
Supports multiple, simultaneous Read

"

and Write
Low ratio of ECC (Parity) disks to data

"

disks means high efficiency

No practical

"

use

Doesn’t

"

support
multiple,
simultaneous
Read and Write
requests
Transaction

"

rate equal to
that of a single
disk drive at
best (if spindles
are
synchronized)
Worst Write

"

transaction rate
and Write
aggregate
transfer rate

"

Write

"

performance is
slower than
RAID 0 or
RAID1

2. The features of RAID on this motherboard

This motherboard supports Striping (RAID 0), Mirroring (RAID 1), or Striping/Mirroring (RAID 0+1)
operation. For the striping operation, the identical drives can read and write data in parallel to increase
performance. The Mirroring operation creates a complete backup of your files. Striping with Mirroring
operation offers both high read/write performance and fault tolerance although requiring 4 hard disks in
order to do so.

2-1. Setting up RAID on this motherboard

Enter Advanced BIOS Features in the BIOS setup. Change the settings of First Boot Device, Second Boot
Device and Third Boot Device to read ATA – 100. See the figure below:

HPT370 RAID Controller Guide