User`s manual

Disk Array Terms

Disk Array Description

A “disk array” is formed from a group of 2 or more disk drives which appear to the system as

a single drive. The advantage of an array is to provide better throughput performance and/or

data fault tolerance. Better performance is accomplished by sharing the workload in parallel

among multiple physical drives. Fault tolerance is achieved through data redundant

operation where if one (or more) drive fails or has a sector failure, a mirrored copy of the

data can be found on another drive(s).

For optimal results, select identical

Ultra ATA/133 drives in the same disk array. The drives’

matched performance allows the array to function better as a single drive.

Disk Array Member

The individual disk drives in an array are called “members.” Each member of a specific disk

array is coded in their “reserved sector” with configuration information that identifies the

drive as a member. All disk members in a formed disk array are recognized as a single

physical drive to the system.

Disk Array Types

For most installations, “Auto Setup “<1>” in the FastBuild

utility will configure your system.

There are four disk array types in three categories that can be installed on the system board.

Striping is in the Performance category while Mirroring and Striping/Mirroring are in the Fault

Tolerance category.

Disk arrays within the Performance and Fault Tolerance categories conform with the

Redundant Array of Independent Disks technology, or RAID. The RAID levels supported are

0 and 1.

RAID Level

Performance

Capacity

# of

Drives

RAID 0 (Striping)

RAID 1 (Mirroring)

Highest

Normal

# Drives x Smallest Size

50% min

2 to 4