Asus M5A97 PRO [113/128] Chapter 4

ASUS M5A97 PRO 4-17

Chapter 4

4.4 RAID congurations

The motherboard comes with the AMD

SB950 chipset that allows you to congure

Serial ATA hard disk drives as RAID sets. The motherboard supports the following RAID

congurations: RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5 and RAID 10.

• You must install Windows

XP Service Pack 3 or later versions before using Serial

ATA hard disk drives. The Serial ATA RAID feature is available only if you are using

Windows

XP SP3 or later versions.

• Due to Windows

XP / Vista limitation, a RAID array with the total capacity over 2TB

cannot be set as a boot disk. A RAID array over 2TB can only be set as a data disk

only.

• If you want to install a Windows

operating system to a hard disk drive included in a

RAID set, you have to create a RAID driver disk and load the RAID driver during OS

installation. Refer to section 4.5 Creating a RAID driver disk for details.

4.4.1 RAID denitions

RAID 0 (Data striping) optimizes two identical hard disk drives to read and write data in

parallel, interleaved stacks. Two hard disks perform the same work as a single drive but at a

sustained data transfer rate, double that of a single disk alone, thus improving data access

and storage. Use of two new identical hard disk drives is required for this setup.

RAID 1 (Data mirroring) copies and maintains an identical image of data from one drive to

a second drive. If one drive fails, the disk array management software directs all applications

to the surviving drive as it contains a complete copy of the data in the other drive. This RAID

conguration provides data protection and increases fault tolerance to the entire system. Use

two new drives or use an existing drive and a new drive for this setup. The new drive must be

of the same size or larger than the existing drive.

RAID 5 stripes both data and parity information across three or more hard disk drives. Among

the advantages of RAID 5 conguration include better HDD performance, fault tolerance, and

higher storage capacity. The RAID 5 conguration is best suited for transaction processing,

relational database applications, enterprise resource planning, and other business systems.

Use a minimum of three identical hard disk drives for this setup.

RAID 10 is data striping and data mirroring combined without parity (redundancy data) having

to be calculated and written. With the RAID 10 conguration you get all the benets of both

RAID 0 and RAID 1 congurations. Use four new hard disk drives or use an existing drive

and three new drives for this setup.