Manhattan Computer Products 160377 User Manual

MAN-160377-UM-1006-02

SATA 300 RAID
PCI EXPRESS CARD

USER MANUAL

MODEL 160377

2

Thank you for purchasing the MANHATTAN® SATA 300 RAID PCI Express Card, Model 160377.
Compliant with PCI Express 1.0a and SATA 1.0 specifications, this card adds dual internal
SATA 300 ports to connect data storage and other SATA peripheral devices, and supports
SATA 3 Gbps and RAID 5 data transfer rates.

IMPORTANT: Prior to PCI Express Card (controller card) installation, read the SATA RAID 5
manual on the enclosed CD, in the folder: \SATA PCIe_Raid5_2Port\SiI3132\Windows\Gui
(or \Raid5 SATA2_4Port \SiI3124\Windows\Gui). This RAID manual has more information
about RAID architecture, features, installation and settings, plus management software for RAID
5 GUI (graphical user interface).

After driver installation, if desired, install SATA RAID 5 GUI for RAID management. Before SATA
RAID 5 GUI installation, you must remove all the existing SATA RAID GUI (or Java SATA RAID
GUI) to ensure your new SATA RAID 5 GUI can work properly; i.e.: (\Start\Control Panel\Add
or Remove Programs\Select all SATARaid\Remove).

RAID sets can be created and managed by either the BIOS utility setting or the SATA RAID 5
GUI setting under Windows.

For RAID building, the BIOS utility allows random creation; GUI just supports the building by
sequential SATA Port1, Port2, etc.

3

INTRODUCTION

This SATA 300 RAID PCI Express Card (also known as a low-profile PCI-Express host adapter)
is a controller board that supports both low-profile and regular-size PCI in one card.

The card can upgrade your desktop computer to a 2-port with a SATA 300 transfer rate of
3 Gbps, and supports RAID 5, RAID 0+1, RAID 0, RAID 1 and JBOD features. It accepts host
commands through the PCI Express bus, processes them and transfers data between the host
and SATA 300 devices. When connected to a SATA target device, the card will take the data,
serialize it and output it for transmission over the SATA interface. It can control four independent
SATA channels — each with its own SATA bus — and will support one SATA device.

The card supports SATA 100 and 300 transfer rates of 1.5 Gbps / 3 Gbps. It comes complete
with drivers for Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003.

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 two, three or
four 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.

4

FEATURES

• External SATA 300 (eSATA) connector

• 48 bits LBA can break capacity: limit to support HDD larger than 137 GB

• Supports 1-lane 2.5 Gbps PCI Express

• Hot-plug capability

• Supports SATA 300 transfer rate of 3.0 Gbps

• Fully compliant with SATA 1.0 specifications

• Supports two independent SATA channels

• Independent Link, Transport and data FIFO

• Independent command fetch, scatter/gather and command execution

• Supports Legacy Command Queuing (LCQ)

• Supports Native Command Queuing (NCQ)

• Supports Non-zero offsets NCQ

• Supports Out of Order data delivery NCQ

• Supports FIS-based switching with port multipliers

• 31 commands and scatter/gather tables per port

• Two pin headers on board for LED connection

• Complete with drivers for Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003

• Provides RAID 0 (Striping), RAID 1 (Mirroring) and RAID 0+1 (Mirrored-Striping)

5

WHAT IS RAID?

RAID (redundant array of independent disks) 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. The following RAID-related terms are used in this manual.

Disk Striping (RAID 0): Striping is a performance-oriented, non-redundant data mapping
technique. 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. If a read failure occurs on one drive, the system
reads the data from the other drive.

Mirrored-Striping (RAID 0+1, or RAID 10): A Mirrored-Striping Set provides the performance
enhancements of Striping and the data availability and integrity of Mirroring. When data is
written to a Mirrored-Striped Set, a second (Mirrored) virtual disk is created, as well.

Parity RAID (RAID 0): Parity, or RAID 5, adds fault tolerance to Disk Striping by including
parity information with the data. It uses less capacity for protection and is the preferred method
to reduce the cost per megabyte for larger installations.

Just a Bunch of Disks (JBOD): The JBOD is a virtual disk that can either be an entire disk drive
or a segment of a single disk drive. For this card, the JBOD function only supports one disk.