ECS SiS964, SiS180 User Manual

SiS964/SiS180 SATA w/ RAID

User’s Manual

Quick User’s Guide

Version 0.3

Serial ATA RAID Quick User’s Guide

Edition

December 2003

Trademarks

SiS is a registered trademark of Silicon Integrated Systems Corp. All brand or product names mentioned are trademarks or registered

trademarks of their respective holders.

Revision History

Revision History Date

0.1 Initial release May ‘03

1. Fix some frame’s changes of BIOS Utility and RAID Utility.

2. RAID 0+1 can’t support as a bootable disk

0.2

0.3

and DOS working.

3. For best performance, the sequence of RAID 0+1 is forced to set as Disk 1 -> Disk 2 -> Disk 3 -> Disk 4.

1. Fix some frame’s changes of BIOS Utility.

2. Add some capabilities in BIOS Utility.

a. Broken Raid warning messages show. b. Rebuild Function for RAID 1.

3. Broken Raid warning messages show in

RAID Utility.

October ‘03

December ‘03

Serial ATA RAID Quick User’s Guide

CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................1

Features.......................................................................................................2

Support operating Systems........................................................................2

KNOW HOW..........................................................................................4

PERFORMANCE HINTS AND RECOMMEND SETTING.............4

Step 1. Hardware Setup ............................................................................. 6

HARD DRIVES SETUP ........................................................................6

FOR RAID 0 (STRIPING ARRAY) ............................................................... 6

FOR RAID 1 (MIRROR ARRAY)..................................................................7

FOR RAID 0+1 (STRIPE-MIRROR ARRAY)............................................... 7

FOR JBOD (SPANNING ARRAY)................................................................8

Step 2. Installing Software Drivers...........................................................9

WINDOWS XP/2000/ME/98SE.............................................................9

NEW WINDOWS XP/2000 INSTALLATION................................................ 9

EXISTING WINDOWS XP/2000/ME/98SE INSTALLATION....................10

CONFIRMING WINDOWS XP/2000 DRIVER INSTALLATION..............10

CONFIRMING WINDOWS ME/98SE DRIVER INSTALLATION.............10

Step 3. BIOS Utility Operation................................................................11

STARTING BIOS UTILITY...............................................................11

CREATE RAID .................................................................................... 14

CREATING A RAID 0 (STRIPE) ARRAY FOR PERFORMANCE............14

CREATING A RAID 1 (MIRROR) ARRAY.................................................19

CREATING A JBOD ARRAY ...................................................................... 23

CREATING A RAID 0+1 (STRIPE-MIRROR) ARRAY.............................. 26

Serial ATA RAID Quick User’s Guide

DELETE RAID..................................................................................... 28

STARTING TO DELETE A RAID ARRAY................................................. 28

Step 4. SiS964/SiS180 RAID Utility ........................................................31

STARTING TO USE SIS964/SIS180 RAID UTILITY.....................31

ABOUT CREATE RAID....................................................................34

VIEWING THE “CREATE RAID” ............................................................... 34

CREATE A RAID SET..................................................................................37

ABOUT DELETE RAID.....................................................................46

VIEWING THE RAIDTYPE MEANING......................................................47

DELETE A RAID SET .................................................................................. 49

ABOUT RAID RECOVERY..............................................................52

RAID RECOVERY OPERATION.................................................................52

Serial ATA RAID Quick User’s Guide

Introduction

The SiS180 SATA controller is a hybrid solution that combines two independent SATA ports and one Ultra ATA port for support of up to two Serial ATA (Serial ATA RAID) and two Ultra ATA (Ultra ATA RAID) drives. However the South Bridge SiS964 SATA controller only support two Serial ATA on two independent ports. Specifications are as follows:

Serial ATA Interface

Serial ATA (SATA) is the latest generation of the ATA interface. SATA hard drives deliver blistering transfer speeds of up to 150MB/sec. Serial ATA uses long, thin cables, making it easier to connect your drive and improving the airflow inside your PC.

♦ Supports 150 MB/s transfers with CRC error checking ♦ Large LBA support for drives over 137 GB ♦ Data handling optimizations including tagged command queuing, elevator seek

and packet chain command

Ultra ATA Interface

♦ Standard ATA/IDE interface ♦ Supports Ultra ATA/133, Ultra ATA/100, and Ultra ATA/66 drives ♦ Supports CRC error checking for Ultra ATA drives ♦ Separate timing control for two devices attached to one ATA channel

Serial/Ultra ATA RAID Interfaces

The Serial/Ultra ATA RAID is designed to provide a cost-effective, high performance RAID solution that adds performance and/or reliability to PC desktops and/or servers using Serial ATA/150, Ultra ATA/133, Ultra ATA/100, Ultra ATA/66 hard disks.

Serial/Ultra ATA RAID function supports striping (RAID 0), mirroring (RAID

1), striping + mirroring (RAID 0+1) and span (JBOD). Please note that the

function supports hard disk drives only and the South Bridge SiS964 SATA controller don’t support Striping + mirroring (Raid 0+1).

With striping, identical drives can read and write data in parallel to increase performance. Mirroring increases read performance through load balancing and elevator sorting while creating a complete backup of your files. Span would increase the logic hard disk space.

Serial/Ultra ATA RAID striped arrays can double the sustained data transfer rate of Serial ATA/150 and Ultra ATA/133 drives. Serial/Ultra ATA RAID fully

Serial ATA RAID Quick User’s Guide

supports Serial ATA/150 and Ultra ATA/133 specification of up to 150MB/sec per drive, depending on individual drive specifications.

The technology also offers fault tolerant, data redundancy for entry-level network file servers or simply for desktop PC users wanting to continually protect valuable data on their PC. The Serial/Ultra ATA RAID offers RAID 1 mirroring (for two drives) to protect data. Should a drive that is part of a mirrored array fail, Serial/Ultra ATA RAID technology uses the mirrored drive (which contains identical data) to assume all data handling. When a new replacement drive is later installed, Serial/Ultra ATA RAID rebuilds data to the new drive from the mirrored drive to restore fault tolerance.

Features

z The SiS180 controller support two Serial ATA (Serial ATA RAID)

and two Ultra ATA (Ultra ATA RAID) drives. The South Bridge SiS964 SATA controller only support two Serial ATA (Serial ATA RAID) drivers.

z Support RAID function: RAID 0, RAID 1, JBOD and RAID 0+1.

(RAID 0+1 function can be used by SiS180 controller with all hard drivers on it.)

z Support bootable disk except for RAID 0+1. z Windows-based SiS RAID Utility software tool (only support

Windows XP and 2000).

z BIOS RAID Setting Utility

Support operating Systems

z Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition

Serial ATA RAID Quick User’s Guide

z Microsoft Windows Me z Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional and Server z Microsoft Windows XP

Serial ATA RAID Quick User’s Guide

Step 0. What is RAID

Know How

This section will give you an overview about the RAID system and introduce the basic background and glossary which you need to know before using “SiS RAID Controller Application”.

1. RAID: (Redundant Array of Independent Disk Drives) use jointly several hard drives to increase data transfer rates and data security. It depends on the number of drives present and RAID function you select to fulfill the security or performance purposes or both.

2. RAID 0: Also known as “Stripping”. All of the data are distributed evenly to all of the existing drives. You gain benefits on performance because the data transfer rate is multiplied by the number of drives. However, RAID 0 has high risks of data security. All of the stored data will be lost if even any one drive in the RAID set crashes.

3. RAID 1: Also known as “Mirroring”. Two hard drives are required. The goal of RAID 0 is to ensure data security. Data is written to two or more drives synchronously. That is, 100% duplication of data from one drive to another.

4. RAID 0+1: Also known as “StripeMirror”. At least four hard drivers are required. RAID 0+1 is a combination of RAID 0 and RAID 1. Data is striped into two drives then mirrored. It provides high performance and high data protection. This is a costly solution as RAID 1 because the two mirrored drives represent an expensive insurance

5. JBOD: (Just a Bunch of Drives). Also known as “Spanning”. Two or more hard drives are required. Several hard disk types configured as a single hard disk. The hard drives are simply hooked up in series. This expands the capacity of your drive and results in a useable total capacity. However, JBOD will not increase any performance or data security.

Performance hints and recommend setting

For the best performance and reliability, please read the following suggestions.

1. In Serial ATA port, use Native Serial ATA drives. Parallel ATA to Serial ATA converter board is NOT suggested.

2. In Parallel ATA port, use ATA 66/100/133 hard drives

3. Use the same model hard drives.

4. If you have only two Serial ATA drives, the auto-configure function will assign each on a different channel as a master drive. Using only two Parallel ATA drives to create a RAID array is NOT suggested. It might decrease performance.

Serial ATA RAID Quick User’s Guide

5. Always use 80-conductor cables.

6. We strongly recommend you should use “DMA” transfer mode.

7. The recommended block size is “64K” when creating RAID 0 and RAID 0+1.

8. The best performance of RAID 0+1 is set the sequence as Disk 1 -> Disk 3 -> Disk 2 -> Disk 4. So the SiS RAID Utility and BIOS RAID Setting Utility will force to set the sequence as 1324.

Serial ATA RAID Quick User’s Guide

Step 1. Hardware Setup

Hard Drives setup

The SiS180 controller supports up to two Serial ATA hard drives and two Parallel ATA hard drives. The South Bridge SiS964 SATA controller only supports two Serial ATA hard drivers.

For RAID 0 (Striping array)

z Any combination to 2, 3 or 4 Hard disks would combine to a stripe

system.

z The South Bridge SiS964 SATA controller only supports combination 6

and the SiS180 controller supports all combinations.

HDD Population Rules for RAID 0 (Striping)

Ultra ATA (Master) Ultra ATA (Slave) Serial ATA (Master 1) Serial ATA (Master 2)

1 2 3 4 X 5 X 6 X X 7 8

9 10 X 11

V V V V

V V V V V V

V V V V

X X X

V V V

X X V

X V V

X V X

V = Selected; X = Unselected

NOTE: Storage Capacity: the number of hard drives times the capacity of the

smallest drive in the disk array

Working Speed: the speed of the lowest drive in the disk array

Serial ATA RAID Quick User’s Guide

For RAID 1 (Mirror array)

z Any of 2 Hard disks would make a mirror system. z The South Bridge SiS964 SATA controller only supports combination 6

and the SiS180 controller supports all combinations.

HDD Population Rules for RAID 1 (Mirroring)

Ultra ATA (Master) Ultra ATA (Slave) Serial ATA (Master 1) Serial ATA (Master 2)

4 X

5 X

6 X X

V V V V

X X X

V V V

V = Selected; X = Unselected

NOTE: Storage Capacity: the capacity of the smallest drive in the disk array

Working Speed: the speed of the lowest drive in the disk array

X X V

X V V

X V X

For RAID 0+1 (Stripe-Mirror array)

z 4 Hard disks would set up a RAID 0 + 1 z Only the SiS180 controller can support this function.

HDD Population Rules for RAID 0+1 (Striping + Mirroring)

Ultra ATA (Master) Ultra ATA (Slave) Serial ATA (Master 1) Serial ATA (Master 2)

NOTE: Storage Capacity: the capacity of the smallest drive in the disk array

V V V V

V = Selected; X = Unselected

Working Speed: the speed of the lowest drive in the disk array

Serial ATA RAID Quick User’s Guide

For JBOD (Spanning array)

z Any combination to 2, 3 or 4 Hard disks would combine to a JBOD

system.

z The South Bridge SiS964 SATA controller only supports combination 6

and the SiS180 controller supports all combinations.

HDD Population Rules for JBOD (Spanning)

Ultra ATA (Master) Ultra ATA (Slave) Serial ATA (Master 1) Serial ATA (Master 2)

4 X

5 X

6 X X

9 10 X 11

V V V V

V V V V V V

V V V V

X X X

V V V

X X V

X V V

X V X

V = Selected; X = Unselected

NOTE: Storage Capacity: the number of hard drives times the capacity of the

smallest drive in the disk array

Working Speed: the speed of the lowest drive in the disk array

Serial ATA RAID Quick User’s Guide

Step 2. Installing Software Drivers

z SiS RAID driver support Microsoft Windows XP/2000/Me/98SE

1. SiS180 controller support Serial ATA/Ultra ATA w/ RAID0, RAID1, RAID0+1 and JBOD by installing SiS RAID driver .

2. South Bridge SiS964 SATA controller support Serial ATA w/ RAID0, RAID 1 and JBOD by installing SiS RAID driver. For RAID function, SiS180 support RAID0, RAID1, RAID0+1 and JBOD and SIS 964 support RAID0, RAID1 and JBOD by software RAID driver only.

3. Support the function of installing Windows Operation System to RAID array except for RAID 0+1.

For special occasions, users can refer to the following sections with details on the SiS964/SiS180 driver installation when used with various operating systems.

Windows XP/2000/Me/98SE

New Windows XP/2000 Installation

The following details that installation of the drivers while installing new Windows XP/2000. This method don’t be supported for new Windows Me/98SE installation.

1. Start the installation:

Boot from the CD-ROM. Press F6 when the message “Press F6 key

if you need to install third party SCSI or RAID driver” appears.

2. When the Windows XP/2000 Setup window is generated, press S

key to specify an Additional Device(s).

3. Insert the driver diskette into drive A: and press Enter.

4. Choose one of the following items:

“WinXP SiS Raid/IDE Controller “, “Win2000 SiS Raid/IDE Controller”,

that appears on screen, and then press the Enter key.

Serial ATA RAID Quick User’s Guide

5. Press Enter to continue with installation or if you need to specify

any additional devices to be installed, do so at this time. Once all devices are specified, Press Enter to continue with installation.

6. From the Windows XP/2000 Setup screen, press the Enter key.

Setup will now load all device files and then continue the Windows XP/2000 installation.

7. Please install the driver package again (ex. SiS RAID driver

v1.02) while the operation system has been setup.

Remark:

If you would like to install windows to any RAID set, you should create RAID from BIOS RAID setting Utility or SiS964/SiS180 RAID Utility first and then follow the steps above.

Existing Windows XP/2000/Me/98SE Installation

1. Install the driver by execute SiS RAID driver setup utility.

2. The drivers will be automatically installed.

Confirming Windows XP/2000 Driver Installation

1. From Windows XP/2000, open the Control Panel from “My

Computer” followed by the System icon.

2. Choose the “Hardware” tab, then click the “Device Manager” tab.

3. Click the “+” in front of “SCSI and RAID Controllers” hardware type.

The driver “ SiS 180 Raid Controller ” should appear.

Confirming Windows Me/98SE Driver Installation

1. From Windows Me/98SE, open the Control Panel from “My

Computer” followed by the System icon.

2. Choose the “Device Manager” tab.

3. Click the “+” in front of “ IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers” hardware

type. The driver “ SiS 180 IDE Dual Channel ” and “ SiS 180 IDE/RAID Controller ” should appear.

Serial ATA RAID Quick User’s Guide

Step 3. BIOS Utility Operation

Note:

For the best performance and reliability, please read “Performance Hints and Recommend Setting” section in Step 0.

Starting BIOS Utility

1. Boot your system. If this is the first time you have booted with the SiS964 or SiS180 and the drives installed, the BIOS will display the following.

Press <Ctrl><S> to run BIOS Setting Utility Scan Devices. Please wait…………

Primary Master : XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXMB UDMA X Primary Slave : < Device Not Found > Secondary Master : < SATA Device Not Found > Secondary Slave : XXXXXXXXXX XXXXXMB UDMA X

[ RAID Information ]

[ RAID Information ] includes some statements. See below : a. No RAID Install !! Æ Not any completed RAID exists.

b. Raid 1 (Mirror) : [Disk X] [Disk X] Æ Have a RAID set. c. Broken RAID detected. Do you want to enter Setup Menu (Y/N)? Y

Æ You can select [Y] to enter setup menu to handle it. Or you can select [N] to ignore this message.

d. Found a new HD! Do you want to rebuild RAID 1? Y

the controller has broken Raid 1 and single HDD existing simultaneously and the location of single HDD is just conformed it’s rebuild conditions.

Æ Occurs when

Serial ATA RAID Quick User’s Guide

e. The Raid is wrong!! Do you want to fix it??(Y/N) Æ Occurs when the

locations of two SATA HDD change owing to ATA HDD existing or not.

2. Press <Ctrl-S> keys to display the SiS964/SiS180 Utility Main Menu.

3. Press <R> to display the RAID setup menu below. This is the fastest and easiest method to create your first array. The [A] and [D] key will appear randomly in the different conditions.

[a]. No RAID existing but have available disks existing :

Serial ATA RAID Quick User’s Guide

[b]. No available disk existing but have RAID existing:

[c]. Available disks and RAID existing simultaneously:

Serial ATA RAID Quick User’s Guide

[d]. Available disk is not enough to create RAID:

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ECS SiS964, SiS180 User Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual