User manual
Table Of Contents
- RAIDXpert User Manual
- Contents
- Chapter 1: Introduction
- Chapter 2: Installation
- Chapter 3: Setup
- Chapter 4: RAIDXpert User Interface
- Chapter 5: Monitoring and Managing
- Logging into RAIDXpert
- Choosing a Language
- Logging out of RAIDXpert
- User Management
- Host Management
- Utility Configuration
- Controller
- Physical Drives
- Logical Drives
- Viewing Logical Drives
- Creating a Logical Drive
- Deleting a Logical Drive
- Viewing Logical Drive Information
- Making Logical Drive Settings
- Backing up a RAID Ready Logical Drive
- Migrating a Logical Drive
- Rebuilding a Logical Drive
- Synchronizing All Logical Drives
- Synchronizing One Logical Drive
- Initializing a Logical Drive
- Logical Drive Activation
- Managing a Critical or Offline Logical Drive
- Spare Drives
- Chapter 6: Technology Background
- Appendix A: Frequently Asked Questions
- Appendix B: Partition and Format
Chapter 6: Technology Background
97
RAID 5 – Block Striping with Distributed Parity
RAID 5 stripes data and distributes parity information across the physical drives
along with the data blocks. This organization increases performance by
accessing multiple physical drives simultaneously for each operation, as well as
fault tolerance by providing parity data. In the event of a physical drive failure,
data can be re-calculated by the RAID system based on the remaining data and
the parity information.
RAID 5 makes efficient use of hard drives and is the most versatile RAID Level. It
works well for file, database, application and web servers.
Figure 3. RAID 5 Stripes all drives with data and parity information
The capacity of a RAID 5 logical drive is the smallest physical drive size
multiplied by the number of physical drives, less one. Hence, a RAID 5 logical
drive with four 100 GB physical drives will have a capacity of 300 GB. A logical
drive with two 120 GB physical drives and one 100 GB physical drive will have a
capacity of 200 GB.
RAID 5 logical drives on the AMD Chipset SATA Controller consist of 3 or 6
physical drives.
Data
Blocks
Distributed Parity
physical drives