Lindy 70542, 70541 User Manual 2

RAID Native SATA–150

User Manual

English

4 Ports PCI Host

LINDY No. 70541 (Internal 4 Port)

LINDY No. 70542 (External 2 Port + Internal 2 Port)

www.LINDY.com

© LINDY ELECTRONICS LIMITED & LINDY-ELEKTRONIK GMBH - FIRST EDITION (November 2004)

1. Introduction

This RAID Native SATA-150 4Ports PCI Host Adapter is a PCI to 4Ports Serial ATA host

controller board. It provides a 32bit, 33/66 MHz PCI interface on the host side and dual,

fully compliant Serial ATA ports on the device side to access SATA Hard disk drive.

The board can be used to upgrade your desktop computer to have 4Ports Serial

ATA Channels and support RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 0+1 features. It accepts host

commands through the PCI bus, processes them and transfers data between the host

and Serial ATA devices. The board should be connected to SATA target device and

will take the data, serialize it and output it for transmission over the SATA interface.

The board can control four independent Serial ATA channels. Each channel has its

own Serial ATA bus and will support one Serial ATA device.

The board supports Serial ATA Generation 1 transfer rate of 1.5 Gb/s (150 MB/s). It

comes completely with drivers for Windows 98, Windows Millennium, Windows NT 4.0,

Windows 2000 and XP.

RAID, Redundant Array of Independent Disks, greatly enhances two main areas of data

storage: performance and data integrity. By using RAID 0, also known as Striping,

performance of sustained data transfer rates is greatly enhanced by simultaneously

writing data to 2, 3 or 4 drives. The second benefit of RAID is data redundancy. RAID 1,

Mirroring, writes identical data on two drives or sets of drives, thus protecting the data from

a disk failure. If, for any reason, one drive were to fail, your data is secure and available

from the mirrored second drive.

1.1. Features

1.1.1. PCI Interface

Compliant with PCI Specification, revision 2.2.

Integrated PCI DMA engines.

32 bit, 33/66MHz fully compliant PCI host interface.

1.1.2. High Speed Serial ATA Interface

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Four high speed Serial ATA interface ports, each supporting 1st generation

Serial ATA data rates (1.5Gb/s).

Provides RAID 0 (Stripping) to greatly increase the performance of data

transfer by simultaneously writing data to 2 drives.

Provides RAID 1 (Mirroring) to protect the data from a disk failure by writing

identical data on 2 drives.

RAID 0+1 (Mirrored-Stripping) combine both Striping and Mirroring technologies to

provide both the performance enhancements that come from Striping and the data

availability and integrity that comes from Mirroring.

Fully compliant with Serial ATA 1.0 specifications.

Supports Spread Spectrum in receiver.

Independent 256-byte FIFOs (32 bit * 64 deep) per Serial ATA channel for host

reads and writes.

1.1.3. The Individual features for different HBA Models

1.1.3.1. Model A: Serial ATA Internal 4 Ports

Supports Independent four Internal Ports

1.1.3.2. Model B: SATA External 2 Port + Internal 2 Port

Supports two External Ports and two Internal Ports

Special Shell SATA connectors on External Port to support Mobile HDD, Mobile

CD-ROM, Mobile DVD and Mobile CD-RW

One USB-like Connector on board to provide 2A / 5V DC power output for External

Devices using

1.2. Package Contents

RAID Native SATA-150 4Ports PCI Host Adapter

This Users Manual

Driver CD

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2. What Is RAID

RAID - Redundant Array of Independent Disks

RAID technology manages multiple disk drives to enhance I/O performance and provide

redundancy in order to withstand the failure of any individual member, without loss of

data. This card provides two RAID Set types, Striped (RAID 0) and Mirrored (RAID 1).

Disk Striping (RAID 0)

Striping is a performance-oriented, non-redundant data mapping technique. While Striping

is discussed as a RAID Set type, it is actually does not provide fault tolerance. With

modern SATA bus mastering technology, multiple I/O operations can be done in parallel,

enhancing performance. Striping arrays use multiple disks to form a larger virtual disk.

Disk Mirroring (RAID 1)

Disk mirroring creates an identical twin for a selected disk by having the data simultaneously

written to two disks. This redundancy provides instantaneous protection from a single disk

failure. If a read failure occurs on one drive, the system reads the data from the other

drive.

Mirrored-Striping (RAID 0+1 also known as RAID 10)

A Mirrored-Striping Set does just what it says, combining both Striping and Mirroring

technologies to provide both the performance enhancements that come from Striping

and the data availability and integrity that comes from Mirroring. When data is written to a

Mirrored-Striped Set, instead of creating just one virtual disk as Striping would do, a

second, Mirrored virtual disk is created as well.

3. BIOS Installation ( RAID Setting )

Creating and deleting RAID sets is a function found in the BIOS. During boot up, the RAID

setting message will appear and pause for a few moments to allow the user to choose what

to do. This board will act as normal NON-RAID card when BIOS not configured for RAID.

Just proceed to Software Installation section directly. If you use traditional parallel ATA

HDD, make sure your hard drives be set up as master mode before the RAID setting.

3.1. Creating Striped Sets (RAID 0)

1. As the BIOS boots, Press CTRL+S or F4 to enter the raid bios utility.

2. Select Create RAID set. Press Enter.

3. Select Stripe then press Enter.

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