Asus P5B - Manual (Page 124)

5-24 Chapter 5: Software support
If you want to boot the system from a hard disk drive included in a created RAID
set, copy first the RAID driver from the support CD to a floppy disk before you
install an operating system to the selected hard disk drive. Refer to section “5.5
Creating a RAID/SATA driver disk” for details.
5.4 RAID configurations
The motherboard comes with the JMicron ® JMB363 RAID controller that allows you
to configure Serial ATA hard disk drives as RAID sets. The motherboard supports
the following RAID configurations.
RAID 0
(Data striping) optimizes two identical hard disk drives to read and write data
in parallel, interleaved stacks. Two hard disks perform the same work as a single
drive but at a sustained data transfer rate, double that of a single disk alone, thus
improving data access and storage. Use of two new identical hard disk drives is
required for this setup.
RAID 1
(Data mirroring) copies and maintains an identical image of data from one
drive to a second drive. If one drive fails, the disk array management software directs
all applications to the surviving drive as it contains a complete copy of the data in
the other drive. This RAID configuration provides data protection and increases fault
tolerance to the entire system. Use two new drives or use an existing drive and a
new drive for this setup. The new drive must be of the same size or larger than the
existing drive.
JBOD (
Spanning) stands for Just a Bunch of Disks and refers to hard disk drives
that are not yet configured as a RAID set. This configuration stores the same data
redundantly on multiple disks that appear as a single disk on the operating system.
Spanning does not deliver any advantage over using separate disks independently
and does not provide fault tolerance or other RAID performance benefits.
5.4.1 Installing Serial ATA hard disks
The motherboard supports Serial ATA hard disk drives. For optimal performance, install
identical drives of the same model and capacity when creating a disk array.
To install the SATA hard disks for a RAID configuration:
. Install the SATA hard disks into the drive bays.
. Connect the SATA signal cables.
. Connect a SATA power cable to the power connector on each drive.