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ThinkStation Software RAID Solutions

Version 1 . 0

1. Introduction

The introduction of the new P-series ThinkStation line brought with it several new technologies that are being seen for
the first time in workstation class systems. One of these critical technologies is PCIe based storage devices.

These devices offer a large increase in bandwidth over today’s standard storage solutions which are typically based on
the standard SATA bus. By using PCIe gen3 lanes that connect directly back to the CPU, PCIe based storage devices can
achieve throughputs that far exceed even gen3 SATA devices.

However, because these fast storage devices generally connect directly to the CPU, there is no host bus adapter (HBA)
available that can be used to RAID PCIe drives together in the traditional manner. This is where a software based RAID
solution can be used to increase both the performance and redundancy of PCIe based storage devices. It’s important to
note that this same software based RAID solution can also be applied to traditional storage devices (such as SATA or
SAS), however the RAID performance of the software based solution generally lags behind that of a traditional hardware
based RAID solution.

This document will instruct users in how to set up software based RAID solutions using the integrated features of the
Windows operating system.

2. Windows 7 Software RAID Solution

Windows 7 has a built in software RAID component that can easily be enabled with just a few clicks with no
need to install additional software. It is important to note that in order for drives to be RAIDed together, the
drive containing the active OS image (i.e. the boot drive) cannot be part of the RAID array. Also, Windows must
be able to see your devices in order to create the software RAID array.

Note : The following procedure will wipe out any existing data on the drives to be included in the RAID array.
Please be aware of this before proceeding and save any existing user data to another location.

Software RAID arrays can be created by following the steps below:

1. From the Windows 7 desktop, click “Start”, then right click on “Computer” and select “Manage”. Note that

you will have to provide administrator access to complete this step.

2. Once the Computer Management window opens, click on “Disk Management” in the left pane.

3. At this point, the upper pane will show a list of all drives currently detected by the system. The lower pane

shows a more visual representation of the drives and any partitions on each drive.