MSI K8n Sli H Manual

							6-16MS-7100 ATX Mainboard
3. Click Next.
The RAID Array Selection page appears.
4. From the RAID Array Selection page, select one of the arrays from the list.
This is the array to which you want to allocate the dedicated free disk.
5. Click Next.
The Completing the NVIDIA Spare Disk Allocation page appears.
6. Click Finish.
As shown in figure below, the ST380023AS drive is now a dedicated free disk in the
mirrored array. If a system crash occurs that causes any of the two ST360015A
drives to fail, the ST380023AS hard drive will take over and be used in the newly
formed mirrored array.
Once a dedicated disk has been assigned to a particular array, it can be removed at
any time. To remove the disk, right click on the dedicated disk and select the option to
remove it. 
						

							6-18MS-7100 ATX Mainboard
5. Click Next. The Completing the NVIDIA Spare Disk Allocation page appears.
6. Click Finish.
You have now assigned a dedicated free disk to a mirrored array.
Once a dedicated disk has been assigned to a particular array, it can be removed at
any time. To remove the disk, right click on the dedicated disk and select the option to
remove it. 
						

							6-19 nVIDIA RAID IntroductionExample of Dedicating a Free Disk in a RAID 1 or RAID 0+1 Array
You can also assign a dedicated free disk to a RAID 1 or a RAID 0+1 array, using the
same process.
1. Right-click either the free disk that you want to dedicate to an array, the array type,
or the array drives as shown in the figure below. Then click Designate Spare to
launch the Spare Disk Allocation Wizard.
2. Click Designate Spare and then follow the instructions in the Wizard. The figure
below shows an example of a RAID 1 array that has one spare disk dedicated to it.
Once a dedicated disk has been assigned to a particular array, it can be removed at
any time. To remove the disk, right click on the dedicated disk and select the option to
remove it. 
						

							6-20MS-7100 ATX Mainboard
Rebuilding a RAID Mirrored Array
Rebuilding is the process of recovering data from one hard drive to another. All data
is copied from one hard drive to another and then the data is synchronized between
the two hard drives. This only applies to RAID 1 array as well as a RAID 0+1 array.
Rebuilding Instructions
After creating a mirrored array, you can rebuild the array using the following steps:
1. Go to Windows and run the NVRAID Management utility. The figure below shows
an example of a system with one mirrored array.
2. Right-click on Mirroring. The popup menu appears.
3. From the popup menu, click Rebuild Array. The NVIDIA Rebuild Array Wizard
appears. 
						

							6-21 nVIDIA RAID Introduction4. 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. 
						

							6-22MS-7100 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, follow the same steps
as explained in “Rebuilding a RAID Mirrored Array” on p.5-20, except when prompted
to select a disk, choose one of the two available free disks. 
						

							7-1 Silicon RAID IntroductionChapter 7. Silicon Image
SATARAID IntroductionSilicon Image SATARAID
 IntroductionMSI Reminds You...
All the information/volumes listed in your system might differ from the
illustrations in this appendix.            Silicon Image’s SATARAID software provides Serial ATA RAID 0 (Striping)
, RAID 1 (Mirroring) and concatenation functionality to enhance the industry’s
leading PCI-to-SATA host controller products. Two major challenges facing the
storage industry today are keeping pace with the increasing 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 SATARAID, both of these
problems are solved. SATARAID software provides a Graphical User Interface
(GUI) for easy-to-use configurations of the RAID Groups. 
						

							7-2MS-7100 ATX MainboardIntroduction
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.Concatenation
Concatenation provides a method for combining drives of different sizes into one
large disk 
						

							7-3 Silicon RAID IntroductionCreating and Deleting RAID sets with BIOS Utility
Creating and deleting RAID sets must be performed in the BIOS for operating systems
other than Windows 2000 and XP.For 2000 and XP, RAID sets can be created and
managed by either the BIOS utility or the SATARAID GUI.
Be sure to enable the Silicon RAID Controller in Onboard Devices Configura-
tion of Integrated Peripherals in BIOS before configuring the silicon BIOS. After
that press F10 to save the configuration and exit. 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 set
Delete RAID set
Rebuild RAID 1 set
Resolve Conflicts
Low Level Format
Logical Drive Info