Toshiba Magnia 560S - Manual (Page 131)

Configuring Arrays and Logical Drives
MegaRAID BIOS Configuration Utility
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7. To continue defining arrays, repeat step 3. To begin logical drive configuration, go
to step 8.
8. Press to configure logical drives.
The logical drive configuration screen appears. The logical drive that is currently
being configured and any existing logical drives display. The column headings are:
LD - The logical drive number
RAID - The RAID level
Size - The logical drive size
#Stripes - The number of stripes (physical drives) in the associated physical array
StrpSz -The stripe size
DriveState - The state of the logical drive
9. Highlight RAID and press to set the RAID level for the logical drive.
The available RAID levels for the current logical drive appear.
10. Select a RAID level and press to confirm. See the MegaRAID Hardware
Guide for your board for an explanation of the RAID levels.
11. Highlight Span and press to set the spanning mode for the current logical
drive.
The choices are:
- CanSpan -Array spanning is enabled for the current logical drive. The logical
drive can occupy space in more than one array.
- NoSpan - Array spanning is disabled for the current logical drive. The logical
drive can occupy space in only one array.
For two arrays to be spannable, they must have the same stripe width (they must
contain the same number of physical drives) and they must be consecutively
numbered. For example, assuming Array 2 contains four disk drives, it can be
spanned only with Array 1 and/or Array 3, and only if Arrays 1 and 3 also
contain four disk drives. If the two criteria for spanning are met, MegaRAID
automatically activates spanning. If the criteria are not met, the Span setting
makes no difference for the current logical drive.
12. Configure a RAID 10 or RAID 50 logical drive.
- Configure RAID 10 by spanning two contiguous RAID 1 logical drives. The
RAID 1 logical drives must have the same stripe size.
- Configure RAID 50 by spanning two contiguous RAID 5 logical drives. The
RAID 5 logical drives must have the same stripe size.
13. Move the cursor to Size and press to set the logical drive size.
By default, the logical drive size is set to all available space in the array(s) being
associated with the current logical drive, accounting for the Span setting and for
partially used array space. For example, if the previous logical drive used only a
part of the space in an array, the current logical drive size is set to the remaining
space by default.
14. Open the Advanced Menu to set the remaining options.
15. Set the Stripe Size on the Advanced Menu.
Stripe size specifies the size of the segments written to each disk in a RAID 0, 5, 10,
or 50 logical drive. You can set the stripe size to 2 KB, 4 KB, 8 KB, 16 KB, 32 KB,
64 KB, or 128 KB. A larger stripe size produces better read performance, especially
if your computer does mostly sequential reads. If you are sure that your computer