RAID levels defined

[Synthohol]

just came across this again, ill explain why in a moment but for all who want to know about this RAID stuff, this is the basic definitions:
RAID Levels Defined
Level 0 Disk striping. Data is written accross multiple disks. Not true RAID because no data redundancy.

Level 1 Mirrored or shadowed disks. Each disk has a duplicate disk. Read performance is increased while slightly slower average access times occur.

Level 2 Uses bit interleave process to spread data across all the array drives. Parity information is stored on additional drives.

Level 3 RAID 2 with one parity drive.

Level 4 RAID 0 with a parity drive.

Level 5 Uses disk striping and parity. The parity information is stored accross the drives eliminating the dedicated parity drive.

o.k. the explination, 4 days ago i loaded the latest beta bios version for my a7v266-e.
as a part (may be the only change from the prev versions) of the upgrade, the RAID bios changed from "lite" ver. 131 build 24, raid 0+1, the new ver. is "full raid mod bios" ver 2.00.0.24 and boasts a 2+0 raid now.
unless i can install a 3rd 40 gigger and create a H/W RAID 5, im not sure how this can improve or help me in speeding things up.
i dont know which channel to put the parity drive on anyway! it may not matter, if only beta bios's would come with documentation!!!

hey fellas, any advice you could lend?

[Player0]

Synth,

The promise controller on the A7V doesn't support RAID5 I'm afraid. When Asus released that board, they crippled the BIOS so that it would only support RAID0. They disabled RAID1 in order to save money with Promise.

If your latest BIOS flash removed the 'lite' restriction, then you probably have RAID1 and RAID10 ability now, along with RAID0. Unfortunately, RAID5 requires you to buy a seperate controller card like the Promise SX4000 or the 3Ware Escalade 7500-4. RAID5 takes a lot of extra processing from RAID1, and requires a special XOR chip which handles the array hashing and provides the redundancy. I use RAID5 at home, and it works great.

Your best bet is probably to use RAID0, and buy a 3rd drive and use it as a data backup (do it manually). Its not as good, but its worked for me for years. You can also do a RAID10 array, which is actually better than RAID5, however you need 4 drives to do it. RAID10 is the fastest solution though.

[sptw]

Hi Synth,

agree totally with Player0, not much to add.You said that this mod bios boasts a 2+0 raid level and i don't know this kind of level Raid.I have never heard about this 2+0 raid level.Again i have to agree with Player0, there's no way to enjoy the Raid 5 with your mobo, unless you buy a good add-on hardware raid card.You are able to setup only Raid 0, Raid 1 and probably Raid 0+1, i'm not sure about this latest with this software raid implemented in your mobo from promise.

Edit: Sorry, i forgot to tell you that there's a way to implement Raid 5 on your system using Windows and converting the discs to the dynamic discs, but my advise is to not spend your time on it, it doesn't worth the efforts.It's better to buy those Cards that Player0 told you.They are reliable.

[lechumbl]

Hi all,

I also have both the SCSI and IDE RAID Levels posted in the FAQ section of our Home Page for reference.

Take care.......

[Player0]

RAID 2+0 is a misnomer. There's really not a RAID20 mode. It could mean there's two RAID 0 channels supported.

There is RAID 1+0
There is RAID 0+1
There is RAID 5+0
There is RAID 0+5

The '+' signifies that you have 'pairs' of arrays working together to form a single virtual drive.

RAID2 is never even used anymore, as RAID5 has replaced it. Im really not sure why the Promise BIOS is saying that. It either is a typo, or someone misnamed the card, or is trying to signify something else with '2+0'.

[sptw]

Im really not sure why the Promise BIOS is saying that.

Probably because it's a moded bios, it's not a release from promise.Someone made a mistake on it.

[Synthohol]

Hey, thanx for the responses, i've been running raid5 on one of my servers for 3 years (through NT) and i dig the speed.
yeah i'll bet 2 more hdd's and i can raid 0 both channels, ill have to see.
thanx again!