Foxconn A690GM2MA, A690VM2MA User Manual

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A690GM2MA A690VM2MA

SATA RAID User Guide

Edition

V1.0

Trademarks

All brand or product names mentioned are trademarks or registered trade-

marks of their respective holders.

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Contents

Using Serial ATA RAID............................................................................................1

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

2.Installing SATA Hard Disks............................................................................... 3

3.BIOS Configration................................................................................................3

4.RAID BIOS Setup................................................................................................4

5.Install operating system with RAID Mode.........................................................7

6.How to create RAID driver floopy disk.............................................................9

7.Initializing and Using the Disk Array.....................................................................10

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Using Serial ATA RAID

This motherboard adopts AMD SB600 southbridge chipset that supports

Serial ATA (SATA) hard disk.For optimal performance,please install identical

drives of the same model and capacity when creating a RAID set.

1.Introduction

RAID Basics

RAID(Redundant Array of indenpendent Disks)is a method of combining

two hard disk drives into one logical unit .The advantage of an Array is to

provide better performance or data fault tolerance. Fault tolerance is

achieved through data redundant opration, where if one drives fails, a

mirrored copy of the data can be found on the other drive. This can prevent

data loss if the operating system fails or hangs.The individual disk drives

in an array are called members.The configuration information of eath

member is recorded in the reserved sector that identifies the drive as a

member.All disk members in a formed disk array are recognized as a

singal phsical drive to the oprating system.

Hard disk drives can be combined together through a few different

methods. The different methods are reffered to as different RAID levels.

Different RAID levels represent different performance levels,security

levels and implementation costs.The RAID levels which the AMD SB600

SATA RAID Host Controller supports are RAID 0,1,0+1 and JBOD.

RAID 0 (Striping)

RAID 0 reads and writes sectors of data interleaved between

multipledrives. If any disk member fails, it affects the entire array. The disk

array data capacity is equal to the number of drive members times the

capacity of the smallest member. The striping block size can be set from

4KB to 64 KB . RAID 0 does not support fault tolerance.

RAID 1(Mirroring)

RAID 1 writes duplicate data onto a pair of drives and reads both sets of

data in parallel. If one of the mirrored drives suffers a mechanical failure

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or does not respond ,the remaining drive will continue to function. Due to

redundancy, the drive capacity of the array is the capacity of the smallest drive.

Under a RAID 1 setup, an extra drive called the spare drive can be attached .

Such a drive will be activated to replace a failed drive that is part of a mirrored

array.Due to the fault tolerance,if any RAID1 drive fails ,data access will not

be affected as long as there are other working drivings in the array.

RAID 10 (0+1)

RAID 10 is a combination of striping and mirroring. This configuration provides
optimal speed and reliability, but you need four SATA hard disks.

JBOD(Spanniing)

A spanning disk array is equal to the sum of the all drives when the drives

used are having different capacities.Spanning stores data onto a drive until it

is full, then proceeds to store files onto the next drive in the array. When any

disk member fails, the failure affects the entire array. JBOD is not really a

RAID and does not support fault tolerance.

Summary of Raid Configrations

Array

Advantages

Drawbacks

#Hard Disks

Fault Tolerance

RAID0

RAID1

RAID0+1

JBOD

High data throughput No fault tolerance

multiple No

100% data

redundancy

Requires two

drives for the storage

space of one drive

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Yes

4+

Yes

multiple No

Optimized for both

100%data redundancy

and performance.

Allows spare disks.

ombines and uses

the capacity of odd

size drives.

Requires two drives

for the storage space

of one drive -the same

as RAID level 1

Decreases perfor-

mance because of the

difficulty in using drives

concurrently or to

optimize drives for

different uses.