Rosewill RC217 User Manual

SATA II 4 Port PCI RAID Card RC217

User Manual

SATAII 4 port PCI RAID Card RC217 User Manual

SATA II 4 Port PCI RAID Card

This Manual is for many Models of SATAII RAID5 HBA that uses Silicon Image SATA II SiI3124 chipset:

1) 32bit PCI bus host card

2) 64bit PCI-X bus host card

3) PCI Express (PCI-e) host card

When the HBA be used on Macintosh as a non bootable adapter, please refer the Mac manuals and Mac drivers

on the path of \Mac OS\SiI3124\Raid5 at the packed driver CD or download from

http://www.siliconimage.com/support/index.aspx?pid=0&cid=0&.

Important RAID5 information for User:

**** Before Host Card installation, we recommend the users to study this manual and the PDF file of

SATARAID5-UserGuide_v1.40.pdf at enclosed CD folder \ Raid5 SATA2_4Port \ SiI3124 \ Windows \ Gui first. The PDF

manual has more detail information on Raid arch itecture, Raid features, Raid installation, Raid setting and

Management software for Raid5 GUI (Graphical User Interface).

Q0: What is RAID5 Card?

A0: RAID5 Card means the SATA Host adapter (the PCI, PCI-X, PCI-e, Cardbus and ExpressCard) which can support

RAID5, RAID0, RAID1, RAID10, BigDrive and JBOD functions by software setting.

Q1: Can I install non-Raid (base) driver or SATARAID driver on RAID5 card?

A1: No, only SATARaid5 driver is used on RAID5 card.

Q2: How to use a single hard drive on RAID5 Card?

A2: New RAID5 GUI (Graphical User Interface) has a new “Pass-Thru” feature. “Pass-Thru” allows access to a new hard

drive or a used one that without any SATARAID5 configuration. If your current driver doesn’t support this “Pass-Thru”

feature, please download the new one and install it.

Q3: Why 2Port SATA II Host Card can support Raid5 or Raid10?

A3: When SATA Port Multiplier and multiple Drives be connected to 2Port SATA II Host Card, the setting of Raid 0, 1,

10, 5 and JBOD will appear on screen accordingly and automatically

Q4: What is Raid0?

A4: RAID0 also known as Stripping or FAST. Stripping is a performance-oriented, non-redundant data mapping

technique. Stripping arrays need at least two drives and use them to form a larger virtual disk.

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SATAII 4 port PCI RAID Card RC217 User Manual

Q5: What is Raid1?

A5: RAID1 also known as Mirroring or SAFE. 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 will read the data from the other

drive. Raid1 need two drives to store the same data.

Q6: What is Raid10?

A6: RAID10 also known as RAID 0+1 or Mirrored-Striping or “SAFE and FAST”. RAID10 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. There are at least four hard drives is need for RAID10 setting.

Q7: What is RAID5?

A7: RAID5 also known as Distributed Parity RAID. RAID 5 adds fault tolerance to Disk Striping by including parity

information with the data. The data and parity information is arranged on the disk array so that parity is written to

different disks. There are at least three hard drives is need for RAID5 setting.

Q8: What is JBOD?

A8: The JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks , also known as Contiguous) means a single logical drive that can either be an entire

disk drive or a segment of a disk drive. JBOD is the Contiguous configuration option when creating RAID Groups (or sets)

in the SATARAID5 Manager utility.

Q9: What is CONCATENATED?

A9: Concatenated also known as Big Drive, The Concatenated combines multiple disks or multiple segments of disks

into a single large disk. It does not provide any data protection or performance improvement but can be useful for utilizing

leftover space on all disks.

Q10: How to make sure RAID5 setting is ready for working?

A10: RAID5 setting may cost hours for component ready and function available, please be patient for that. Especially if Raid5

setting by BIOS, please Click “Task Manager” to make sure there is “Green” color on the selected components and then

Raid5 setting is completed.

Q11: May use the existing used hard drive to RAID5 Card?

A11: Yes, it is workable. But, the working data on your existing used HDD may NOT work and be treated as a blank

drive when you migrate it to RAID5 Card environment.

Q12: Why Windows Device Manager can NOT detect my hard drives, but BIOS can detect it?

A12: In RAID storage system, RAID managing information is saved on the drive. If without the correct RAID

Creating by BIOS or GUI, Windows Device Manager can NOT recognize the existing of hard drive.

Q13: Why RAID5 GUI can NOT recognize my migrating used drive?

A13: When migrating the used HDD to RAID5 card, we better to perform the "Delete Raid Set" on BIOS setting, since the

used HDD may have some different format of RAID managing information and RAID5 GUI may be confused by this data

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