MSI K8n Neo4 Manual

							5-21
nVIDIA RAID Introduction
4. Click Next. The Disk Selection page appears.
5.  Select the drive that you want to rebuild by clicking it from the list, then click Next.
The Completing the NVIDIA Rebuild Array page appears.
6. Click Finish. The array rebuilding starts after a few seconds, and a small pop-up
message appears towards the bottom right corner of the screen as shown in the
figure below.
During the rebuilding process, the NVRAID Management utility screen shows the
status under the System Tasks and Details sections. 
						

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MS-7125 ATX Mainboard
More About Rebuilding Arrays
• Rebuilding Occurs in the Background
The rebuilding process is very slow (it can take up to a day) and occurs in the
background so as not to affect the performance of the system.
• Rebuilding Applies Only to RAID 1 or RAID 0+1 Arrays
Rebuilding an array works only when using RAID1 and/or RAID 0+1. Rebuilding does
not apply to RAID 0 and JBOD arrays.
• You Can Use Any Available Free Disk
You can rebuild a mirrored array using any available Free Disk or Dedicated Disk.
For example, the figure below shows a mirrored array using 34.48 GB HD while
having two Free Disks each 55.90 GB large.
To use one of these available free disks to rebuild your array, except when prompted
to select a disk, choose one of the two available free disks. 
						

							6-1
Silicon Image SATARAID5TM Introduction
Chapter 5. nVidia RAID In-
troduction
Silicon Image SATARAID5TM
 Introduction
MSI Reminds You...
All the information/volumes listed in your system might differ from the
illustrations in this appendix. Silicon Image’s SATARAID5
TM software provides Serial ATA RAID 0
(Striping), RAID 1 (Mirroring), RAID 5 (Parity RAID), RAID 10 (Striping and
Mirroring), and JBOD (just a bunch of disks) functionality to enhance the
industry’s leading PCI-to-SATA host controller products. Two major chal-
lenges facing the storage industry today are keeping pace with the increas-
ing performance demands of computer systems by improving disk I/O
throughput and providing data accessibility in the face of hard disk failures
while utilizing full disk capacity. With SiIicon Image Serial ATA host controller
and SATARAID5, both of these problems are solved. SATARAID5 software
provides a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for easy-to-use configurations of
the RAID Groups. 
						

							6-2
MS-7125 ATX Mainboard
Introduction
RAID - Redundant Array of Independent Disks
RAID technology manages multiple disk drives to enhance I/O performance
and provide redundancy in order to withstand the failure of any individual member,
without loss of data. SATA RAID provides two RAID Set types, Striping (RAID 0)
and Mirroring (RAID 1).
RAID 0 (Striping)
Striping is a performance-oriented, non-redundant data mapping technique.
While Striping is discussed as a RAID Set type, it actually does not provide fault
tolerance. Striping arrays use multiple disks to form a larger virtual disk.
RAID 1 (Mirroring)
Disk mirroring creates an identical twin for a selected disk by having the
data simultaneously written to two disks. This redundancy provides instantaneous
protection from a single disk failure. If a read failure occurs on one drive, the
system reads the data from the other drive.
RAID 10 (Disk Mirroring and Striping)
RAID 10 combines the features of both RAID 0 and RAID 1. Performance
is provided through the use of Striping (RAID 0), 
while adding the fault
tolerance of Mirroring (RAID 1). The implementation of RAID 10 requires four
drives. The drives are 
assigned as two sets of striped pairs. 
						

							6-3
Silicon Image SATARAID5TM Introduction
The data is written to RAID Group A, which is striped (RAID 0). This allows
maximum speed. The data is then mirrored to another RAID 0 striped set, which is
Set B in the figure above. This provides data redundancy (RAID 1), and thus
increased data security. Under certain circumstances, a RAID 10 set can sustain
multiple simultaneous drive failures.
RAID 5 (Parity RAID)
Parity or RAID 5 adds fault tolerance to Disk Striping by including parity information
with the data. Parity RAID dedicates the equivalent of one disk for storing parity
stripes. The data and parity information is arranged on the disk array so that parity
is written to different disks. There are at least 3 members to a Parity RAID set. The
following example illustrates how the parity is rotated from disk to disk.
Parity RAID uses less capacity for protection and is the preferred method to
reduce the cost per megabyte for larger installations. Mirroring requires 100%
increase in capacity to protect the data whereas the above example only requires
a 50% increase. The required capacity decreases as the number of disks in the
group increases.
JBOD (Just Bunch of Disks)
The JBOD is a virtual disk that can either be an entire disk drive or a segment of a
single disk drive. For home edition, JBOD function only supports one disk. 
						

							6-4
MS-7125 ATX Mainboard
SATARAID5 Features
h RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 10, and JBOD Groups are supported.
h Supported OS: Win2000/XP/Server 2003.
h RAID Groups can be created and deleted without exiting Windows.
h Hot Spare and On-line Rebuilding. The spare policy supports testing periodically
   for a health check of the spare disk.
   Spare drive can be global or dedicated to a specific RAID group.
h Supports Auto and Manual rebuild policy for a RAID group.
h System GUI Monitoring Utility:
       Displays/Logs/Alerts Users to Vital RAID Group Information.
       Manages RAID Group Functions (configures, rebuilds, etc.,).
h Supports the ability to partition and map a segment of disk to a virtual LUN or
    disk.
h Supports up to two RAID groups. Any excess capacity on disk drives can be
    formatted as independent logical drives.
h Adjustable Stripe Size for RAID 0, RAID 5, and RAID 10.
h Uses the Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (SMART) feature
    in the attached drives for automatic notification of imminent drive failures.
h Employ RAID recovery algorithms to maintain data integrity in the event of a disk
    failure including bad block management.
h Automatically Selects Highest Available Transfer Speed for All SATA Devices.
   Supports the following:
        Data transfer rate up to 150MB/Sec (SiI3114, SiI3124-1), and 300MB/Sec
         (SiI3124-2)
       Support up to 4 SATA devices connected to a single controller.
        ACPI, SATA 1.0 (SiI3114, Sii3124-1), and SATA 2.0 (SiI3124-2)
h Supports drive roaming capability allowing drives from one controller to be
    moved to another without loss of data.
h Employs a task manager for the scheduling of any RAID or disk management
    operations including RAID group creation, rebuild, and test. 
						

							6-5
Silicon Image SATARAID5TM Introduction
Creating and Deleting Legacy RAID Groups with BIOS Utility
Legacy RAID sets and JBOD can be created and managed by either the BIOS utility
or the SATARAID5 GUI. New RAID groups must be created and managed by the
SATARAID5 GUI.
During boot up, a screen similar to that below will appear for about 5 seconds.
Press CTRL+S or the F4 key to enter the BIOS RAID utility.
The RAID Utility menu screen will be displayed. A brief description of each section
is presented on the next page.
Main Menu
The Main Menu in the upper left corner is used to choose the operation to be
performed. The selections are:
Create RAID Group
Delete RAID Group
Rebuild RAID 1 Set
Resolve Conflicts
Low Level Format
Logical Drive Info     
						

							6-6
MS-7125 ATX Mainboard
Create RAID Group is used to create a new legacy RAID Set or for allocating
legacy spare drives.
Delete RAID Group is used to delete a legacy RAID Set or to deallocate a legacy
spare drive.
Rebuild RAID 1 Set is used to initiate the rebuild of a RAID 1 set after, for
example, a drive in the Group has been replaced.
Resolve Conflicts is used to automatically find the member drives of a RAID set
which has been disrupted (physical drives
swapped around, for example) and restore the Set to proper operation.
Low Level Format allows a single drive to have its data completely wiped out.
Drives assigned to Sets or allocated as spares
cannot be low level formatted.
Logical Drive Info shows the current configuration of each RAID set, allocated
spare, and unallocated physical drive attached
to the SATA host adapter.
These operations are detailed in the pages that follow.
Help Window
This window displays context-sensitive help and status messages.
Physical Drive Information
This window displays the model number and capacities of the drives physically
attached to the SATA host adapter.
Logical Drive Information
This window displays all logical drives connected to the controller. The upper part
lists RAID sets and JBOD drives reported to the system BIOS. The lower part lists
spare drives, reserved drives, conflict drives, and invalid drives not reported to
the system BIOS.
Command Line
The bottom line of the display lists the currently active command keys:
Up and Down arrows select the menu item or action
ESC takes the user to the previous menu
Enter selects the highlighted choice
Ctrl-E exits the utility
Other keys may be active depending upon the currently selected action. 
						

							6-7
Silicon Image SATARAID5TM Introduction
Creating RAID Groups
As previously discussed, the Silicon Image SATA host adapter supports RAID 0, 1,
5, 10, and JBOD configurations. The selection of the RAID level to be used should
be based upon factors including performance, data security, and number of
drives available. It is best to carefully consider the long-term role of the system
and plan the data storage strategy appropriately.Silicon Image has made the
creation of RAID sets very simple. They can be created either automatically or to
allow the greatest flexibility, manually.
1. Select “Create RAID set”
2. Choose a RAID 0 Striped, a RAID 1 Mirrored, a RAID 5 Parity, or a RAID 10
    combination set.
3. Select Automatically or Manually configuration of the RAID Set.     
						

							6-8
MS-7125 ATX Mainboard
4. If manual configuration is selected, the chunk size of Striped Sets can be
selected.
5. If auto configuration is selected, BIOS will select RAID member drives
automatically.
6. Select RAID set size with    and    keys.
7. After the RAID set size is set, the message “Are You Sure?” will display before
completing the configuration. Answer “N” to abort the creation of the new RAID
set, or “Y” to proceed with the RAID set creation.
8. RAID sets can be created in both BIOS and in the SATARaid5 GUI. If you have
excess capacity left on your hard drives after creating a RAID set in the BIOS, you
can later go to the SATARaid5 GUI to create additional logical drives that fully
utilize the capacity on all your hard drives.
Creating Spare Drive
If there is a RAID 1 set, spare driver can be created. The spare drive can be
allocated to the RAID 1 set in the event of a failure of one of the drives in the RAID
1 set.
1. To create a spare drive for RAID 1 set, Select “Create RAID set”
2. Select “Spare Drive” and press Enter.
3. Select spare drive from the physical drive list and press Enter.
4. Select spare drive size with    and    keys.