Chapter 4: Getting Started ● 21Choosing a RAID LevelThis section provides a brief overview of the RAID levels supported by your HostRAIDcontroller, including the minimum and maximum number of disk drives required by each.RAID 0 (Non-redundant Array)—Stripes data across multiple disk drives. Improvedperformance but no redundancy (see page 59).RAID 1 Array—Created from two disk drives where one disk drive is a mirror of the other (thesame data is stored on each disk drive). Redundancy, but reduced capacity (see page 60).RAID 10 Array—Built from two or more equal-sized RAID 1 arrays, stripes and mirrors dataacross multiple disk drives. Redundancy and improved performance (see page 60).Use the table on page 59 to see how many disk drives you must connect to your HostRAIDcontroller to support the RAID level you want.Selecting Disk DrivesWhen selecting disk drives for your RAID array, ensure that all the disk drives have the sameperformance level. You can use different-sized disk drives in the array, but the array will belimited to the capacity of the smallest and slowest disk drive.For more information, refer to the Adaptec Storage Manager User’s Guide or Adaptec StorageManager online Help.Disk Drives for Your ControllerYour SAS controller supports both SAS and SATA (Serial ATA) disk drives. For cableinformation, see next section.Selecting CablesThis section describes the cable options and requirements for your HostRAID controller.SAS CablesYou need one SAS cable for each disk drive you are connecting to your HostRAID controller.
