Foxconn VT8237R Plus User Manual

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VT8237R Plus

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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Using Serial ATA RAID........................................................................3

1. Introduction....................................................................................................3

2. Installing SATA Hard Disks..........................................................................4

3. BIOS Configuration......................................................................................5

4. Install Windows XP/Windows 2000 with RAID mode.............................11

5. Driver and RAID software installation.....................................................13

6. How to create RAID driver floppy disk.....................................................16

Contents

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Using Serial ATA RAID

This motherboard adopts VIA VT8237R Plus southbridge chipset that supports

Serial ATA (SATA) hard disks. You may install two SATA hard disks on the

motherboard for storage devices.

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 Independent 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 operation, where if one drives fails, a mirrored copy of the data

can be found on another drive. This can prevent data loss if the operating sys-

tem fails or hangs. The individual disk drives in an array are called members.

The configuration information of each 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 single physical drive to the operating system.

Hard disk drives can be combined together through a few different methods.

The different methods are referred to as different RAID levels. Different RAID

levels represent different performance levels, security levels and implementa-

tion costs. The RAID levels which the VIA VT8237R Plus SATA RAID Host Con-

troller supports are RAID 0, 1 and JBOD.

RAID 0 (Striping)

RAID 0 reads and writes sectors of data interleaved between multiple drives. 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 64KB. RAID 0 does not support

fault tolerance.

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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 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 RAID 1 drive fails, data access will not be affected as long as

there are other working drives in the array.

JBOD (Spanning)

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.

2. Installing SATA Hard Disks

STEP 1:Install the SATA hard disks into the drive bays.

STEP 2:Connect one end of the SATA data cable to the motherboard’s primary

SATA connector (SATA_1).

STEP 3: Connect the other end of the SATA data cable to the master SATA hard

disk.

STEP 4: Connect one end of the second SATA data cable to the motherboard’s

secondary SATA connector (SATA_2).

STEP 5: Connect the other end of SATA data cable to the secondary SATA hard

disk.

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3. BIOS Configuration

Enter BIOS Setup program

1.Enter the BIOS setup program by pressing the <Del> key during the POST

(Power-On Self Test ).

2.Select the Integrated Peripherals item, then press <Enter>.

3.Select the VIA OnChip IDE Device menu.

4.Switch the SATA Mode option to [RAID].

5.Press <F10> to save the BIOS setting and exit the BIOS setup program.

Enter BIOS Configuration Utility

When the system powers on, the following information will appear on screen.

Press the <Tab> key to enter BIOS configuration utility.

Press <Tab> key into User Window!

The main menu of BIOS configuration utility is as below:

A. Create Array

The VIA VT8237R Plus supports RAID 0, RAID1 and JBOD mode. Follow the

steps to create RAID.