IEI Integration NANO-LX v1.00 - Manual (Page 194)

194 IEI ® Technology, Corp.
E.1 Introduction
The ALi M5283 is a highly integrated disk drive controller that is capable of managing
Parallel-ATA and Serial-ATA interface hard disk drives. The ALi controller supports PATA
UDMA transfer mode up to mode 6 and SATA 1.0 disk drives. The ALi M5283 also comes
with cost-effective RAID functionality that can be used to increase data read/write speed
and to provide protection to data by distributing mirrored duplicates of data onto two disk
drives (RAID1).
CAUTION!
A configured RAID volume (which may consist of multiple hard drives) appears
to an operating system as a contingent storage space. The operating system
will not be able to distinguish the physical disk drives contained in a RAID
configuration.
E.1.1 Precautions
One key benefit a RAID configuration brings is that a single hard drive can fail within a
RAID array without damaging data. With RAID1 array, a failed drive can be replaced and
the RAID configuration restored.
WARNING!
Irrecoverable data loss will occur if a working drive is removed when trying to
remove a failed drive. It is strongly recommended to mark the physical
connections of all SATA disk drives. Drive locations can be identified by
attaching stickers to the drive bays. If a drive member of a RAID array should
fail, the failed drive can then be correctly identified.