311ASUS PCI-DA2100/PCI-DA2200 User’s ManualChapter 3 Functional DescriptionThe advantages of RAID are: Availability, Capacity and Performance.Choosing the right RAID level and drive failure management canincrease Availability, subsequently increasing Performance andCapacity. The ASUS PCI-DA2100/-DA2200 RAID controller providescomplete RAID functionality and enhanced drive failuremanagement.3.1 RAID ManagementRAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Drives. Theadvantages of using a RAID storage subsystem are:• Provides disk spanning by weaving all connected drives into onesingle volume.• Increases disk access speed by breaking data into several blockswhen reading/writing to several drives in parallel. With RAID,storage speed increases as more drives are added.• Provides fault-tolerance by mirroring or parity operation.What are the RAID levels?RAIDLevelDescription MinimumDrivesDataAvailabilityPerformanceSequentialPerformanceRandomNRAID Non-RAID 1 Drive DriveRAID 0 Disk Striping N ==NRAID R: HighestW: HighestR: HighW: HighestRAID 1(0+1)Mirroring PlusStriping (if N>1)N+1 >>NRAID==RAID 5R: HighW: MediumR: MediumW: LowRAID 3 Striping with Parityon dedicated diskN+1 >>NRAID==RAID 5R: HighW: MediumR: MediumW: LowRAID 5 Striping withinterspersed parityN+1 >>NRAID==RAID 5R: HighW: MediumR: HighW: Low
