Asus P5K3 Deluxe - Manual (Page 138)

5-30 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 DVD to a floppy disk before you
install an operating system to the selected hard disk drive. Refer to section 5.5
Creating a RAID driver disk for details.
5.4 RAID configurations
The motherboard comes with the Intel ® ICH9R Southbridge RAID controller that
allow you to configure IDE and 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.