| How to Setup a RAID System |
|
|
| $ Check REAL-TIME pricing for Western Digital WD VelociRaptor WD3000GLFS 300 GB SATA II Hard Drive $ |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| RAID Configuration (Cont’d) |
Intel RAID configuration utility main menu is shown on Figure 11. This screen will show up after you press Control I while the text shown on Figure 9 appears after you turn on your computer.
 click to enlarge Figure 11: RAID configuration utility.
All RAID utilities are very similar and very easy to use. In our example the main screen shows information about the hard disk drives and presents four options. Select the first one, Create RAID Volume, to setup your RAID system. The screen shown on Figure 12 will be shown.
 click to enlarge Figure 12: Creating your RAID system.
Here you will have to configure:
- Volume Name: The name under which your operating system will access your RAID system.
- RAID Level: The RAID type you want, RAID0 (data striping, for improving performance) or RAID1 (mirroring, for improving reliability). Other RAID types will be available depending on the RAID chip you have.
- Disks: For selecting the disks you want to include in this RAID array.
- Strip size: This is the size of the data chunks your RAID system will use. Roughly speaking, this is like the size of each “sector” your hard disk drive will use. The ideal size is subject of a lot of debate. Generally speaking, bigger stripes are better if you work with big files, while smaller stripes are better if you work with small files. If you don’t have a clue on what value to use, leave it on its default size (usually 64 KB or 128 KB). Click here to read a performance test we did using several different stripe sizes.
- Capacity: Here you can configure a lower capacity in order to create more than one RAID volume (like if you were “partitioning” your RAID array, i.e. creating two or more “RAID drives”). For example, instead of having just one 160 GB array we could configure one 100 GB array and another with 50 GB, so the operating system will recognize them as separated disks, even though both will be using the RAID system.
After hitting “Create Volume” a confirmation screen will be shown, remembering that all your data will be lost. Hit “Y” and your RAID will be created.
 click to enlarge Figure 13: Confirmation screen.
 click to enlarge Figure 14: Main menu, now with our RAID array created.
You can see our RAID array created on Figure 14. As you can see we created a RAID0 (striping) system.
Now that our RAID system is created, you will need to install the operating system. This is the trickiest part of the RAID setup process. |
| Pages (8): « 1 2 3 4 [5] 6 7 8 » |
| Print Version | Send to Friend |
|
Bookmark Article
| Comments (0)
|
|
| Recommended Deals |  | Seagate Barracuda (ST3500641AS) 500 GB SATA II Hard Drive
|  | Western Digital Raptor® X WD1500AHFD 150 GB SATA Hard Drive (Retail Version)
|  | Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750 GB SATA II Hard Drive
|  | Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500 GB SATA Hard Drive
|  | Western Digital (WD5000AAKS) 500 GB SATA Hard Drive
|
|
Latest News |
September 5, 2008 - 7:28 AM PST |
September 4, 2008 - 10:59 AM PST |
September 3, 2008 - 7:54 AM PST |
September 2, 2008 - 7:55 AM PST |
September 1, 2008 - 11:16 AM PST |
September 1, 2008 - 10:24 AM PST |
August 29, 2008 - 9:24 AM PST |
August 28, 2008 - 11:43 AM PST |
August 28, 2008 - 11:13 AM PST |
August 28, 2008 - 10:39 AM PST |
| .:: More News ::. |
|
Latest Content |
|
|
| Our Most Popular Articles |
772,423 views
|
480,471 views
|
425,739 views
|
413,914 views
|
408,675 views
|
385,333 views
|
347,934 views
|
333,190 views
|
280,155 views
|
270,356 views
|
|
| Latest Threads in Our Forums |
by rajani1983 |
by yapyap |
by tomahawk 1705 |
by BedCommando |
by jedsky |
by Wall'E |
by Gabriel Torres |
by Gabriel Torres |
by Hardware Secrets Team |
by andybarrel |
| .:: Visit Our Forums ::. |
|
|