Asus P5B - RAID Configurations

5-24 Chapter 5: Software support
If you want to boot the system from a hard disk drive included in a created RAID
set, copy rst the RAID driver from the support CD to a oppy disk before you
install an operating system to the selected hard disk drive. Refer to section “5.5
Creating a RAID/SATA driver disk” for details.
5.4 RAIDcongurations
The motherboard comes with the JMicron
®
JMB363 RAID controller that allows you
to congure Serial ATA hard disk drives as RAID sets. The motherboard supports
the following RAID congurations.
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.
JBOD ( Spanning) stands for Just a Bunch of Disks and refers to hard disk drives
that are not yet congured as a RAID set. This conguration stores the same data
redundantly on multiple disks that appear as a single disk on the operating system.
Spanning does not deliver any advantage over using separate disks independently
and does not provide fault tolerance or other RAID performance benets.
5.4.1 Installing Serial ATA hard disks
The motherboard supports Serial ATA hard disk drives. For optimal performance, install
identical drives of the same model and capacity when creating a disk array.
To install the SATA hard disks for a RAID conguration:
1. Install the SATA hard disks into the drive bays.
2. Connect the SATA signal cables.
3. Connect a SATA power cable to the power connector on each drive.