Rosewill RC201 User Manual

SATA150 RAID 2 Port PCI Host RC201

User Manual

SATA 150 RAID 2 Port PCI Host RC201 User Manual

Contents

1. Introduction ..........................................................................................2

2. What Is RAID ........................................................................................3

3. BIOS Installation ( RAID Setting ) ......................................................... 3

4. Software Installation.............................................................................5

Quick guide: ......................................................................................................... 5

Detail guide: ......................................................................................................... 8

SATA 150 RAID 2 Port PCI Host RC201 User Manual

Important Message:

1. Before controller card installation, we recommend to study the PDF file of SATA Raid manual at

enclosed CD folder \ SATA Raid_2Port \ SiI3x12 \ Win98_me_2000_xp_nt4.0 \ Gui first. This Raid manual has more information on Raid arc hite cture, Raid features, Raid installation, Raid se ttin g and Management software for Raid GUI (Graphical User Interface).

2. After driver installation, if you like, you can install SATARaid GUI for Raid management. Before

SATARaid GUI installation, you must remove all the existing SATARaid GUI (or Java SATARaid GUI) to ensure your new SATARaid GUI can work properly. i.e. : (\ Start \ Control Panel \ Add or Remove Programs \ Select all SATARaid \ Remove)

3. For the creating and management of Raid sets, you can either use BIOS utility setting before Windows

operation or use GUI setting under Windows. Backup all your data in HD before setting any RAID.

4. New HD connecting to RC-201 is recommended to “initial” and “format” before setting a RAID.

Otherwise, PC might find nothing in the system.

5. Please read the PDF file of “SATARAID5-UserGuide_v1.40” for basic RAID knowledge. You can

download this document from Rosewill website.

6. If you have trouble booting from correct HD either from motherboard HD or RC-201 HD, please

change the selection from BIOS “booting sequence”.

7. Although SATA HD is a “hot swap” design, it is strongly recommended that all users turn off the power

before you add any HD to PC.

1. Introduction

This SATA RAID 2 Port PCI Host Adapter is a PCI to dual 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 storage devices.

The board can be used to upgrade your desktop computer to have dual Serial ATA Channels and support RAID 0 and RAID 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 two 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.  Sufficient power current 1.5A5V and 2A12V to supply External Device

SATA 150 RAID 2 Port PCI Host RC201 User Manual

1.1.2. High Speed Serial ATA Interface

 Two special shielded and durable SATA1 connectors for plugging more than 1,000 times  Dual 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.

 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.

1.2. Package Contents

 SATA RAID 2 Port PCI Host Adapter  Users Manual  Driver CD  Low profile bracket

2. What Is RAID

RAID or un-RAID function

RC-201 is designed for two functions- a RAID card with RAID 0/1 or an extending card for two SATA devices with un-RAID. The un-RAID installation is the same as the RAID installation as below. The only different is that you won’t need to enter the RAID BIOS to set a RAID structure. If you want to use RC-201 as a un-RAID card, please do not enter the RAID BIOS and set any RAID set at the beginning of booting. You can jump to P5 directly to complete the driver installation. The only different is ignoring the step of RAID setting and the driver setting is the same as a RAID card.

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 technology. 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.

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.

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