Asus M3A - Manual (Page 126)

5-26 Chapter 5: Software support
5.4 RAID configurations
The motherboard comes with the AMD ® SB600 Southbridge 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.
RAID 0+1 is data striping and data mirroring combined without parity (redundancy
data) having to be calculated and written. With the RAID 0+1 configuration you get
all the benefits of both RAID 0 and RAID 1 configurations. Use four new hard disk
drives or use an existing drive and three new drives for this setup. (For NF-590 SLI
only)
5.4.1 Installing 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.
Installing Serial ATA (SATA) hard disks
To install the SATA hard disks for a RAID configuration:
1. Install the SATA hard disks into the drive bays.
2. Connect the SATA signal cables.
3. Connect a SATA power cable to the power connector on each drive.
Refer to the RAID controllers user manual in the motherboard support CD for
detailed information on RAID configurations. See section 5.2.5 Manual menu.
If you want to boot the system from a hard disk drive included in a RAID set,
copy first the RAID driver from the support CD to a floppy disk before you install
an operating system to a selected hard disk drive. Refer to section 5.6 Creating
a RAID driver disk for details.