User guide
Table Of Contents
- Title Page
- Table of Contents
- About this User Guide
- Introducing the 3ware® SATA RAID Controller
- Getting Started with Your 3ware RAID Controller
- First-Time RAID Configuration Using 3BM
- Driver Installation
- Driver Installation Under Windows
- Driver Installation Under Linux
- Obtaining 3ware Linux Drivers
- Driver Installation Under Red Hat Linux or Fedora Core 5
- Materials required
- Creating a Red Hat Linux Driver Diskette
- Installing the 3ware Kernel Driver Module while Installing Red Hat Linux on a New Unit
- Installing the 3ware Kernel Driver Module on a Red Hat or Fedora Core Linux System that Boots From a Different Device
- About Variables In the Kernel Driver Module Installation Instructions
- Driver Installation Under SuSE Linux
- Compiling a 3ware Driver for Linux
- Driver Installation Under FreeBSD
- 3ware BIOS Manager 2 (3BM 2) Introduction
- 3DM 2 (3ware Disk Manager) Introduction
- Configuring Your Controller
- Configuring Units
- Configuring a New Unit
- Creating a Hot Spare
- Naming a Unit
- Setting Unit Policies
- Changing An Existing Configuration by Migrating
- Deleting a Unit
- Removing a Unit
- Moving a Unit from One Controller to Another
- Adding a Drive
- Removing a Drive
- Rescanning the Controller
- Maintaining Units
- Checking Unit and Drive Status through 3DM
- About Degraded Units
- About Inoperable Units
- Alarms, Errors, and Other Events
- Background Tasks
- Scheduling Background Tasks
- Locating a Drive by Blinking Its LED
- Maintaining Your Controller
- Determining the Current Version of Your 3ware Driver
- Updating the Firmware and Driver
- Downloading the Driver and Firmware
- Updating the Firmware Through 3DM 2
- Updating the 3ware Driver and Firmware Under Windows
- Using the Update Utility With Multiple Controllers
- Updating the 3ware Driver Under Windows XP
- Updating the 3ware Driver Under Red Hat or Fedora Core
- Updating the 3ware Driver Under SuSE
- Updating the 3ware Driver Under FreeBSD
- Updating the Firmware Under Linux and FreeBSD
- Viewing Battery Information
- Testing Battery Capacity
- 3DM 2 Reference
- Troubleshooting
- Appendices
- Index
Understanding RAID Concepts and Levels
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RAID 5 is able to tolerate 1 drive failure in the unit.
Figure 4. RAID 5 Configuration Example
RAID 6
RAID 6 requires a 3ware 9650SE RAID controller.
RAID 6 provides greater redundancy and fault tolerance than RAID 5. It is
similar to RAID 5, but has two blocks of parity information (P+Q) distributed
across all the drives of a unit, instead of the single block of RAID 5.
Due to the two parities, a RAID 6 unit can tolerate two hard drives failing
simultaneously. This also means that a RAID 6 unit may be in two different
states at the same time. For example, one sub-unit can be degraded, while
another may be rebuilding, or one sub-unit may be initializing, while another
is verifying.
RAID 6 requires a minimum of five drives. Performance and storage
efficiency also increase as the number of drives increase.