Asrock N68C-S manual

1 NVIDIA RAID Installation Guide 1. NVIDIA BIOS RAID Installation Guide …………………….. 2 1.1 Introduction to RAID …………………… ………………. 2 1.2 RAID Configurations Precautions ………………… ….. 3 1.3 Installing Win dows 7 / 7 64-bit / Vista / Vista 64-bit / XP / XP 64-bit With RAID Functions …… ……?[...]

2 1. NVIDIA BIOS RAID Installation Guide NVIDIA BIOS RAID Installation Guide is an instruction for you to con figure RAID functions by using NVIDIA RAID Utility under BIOS environment. After you make a SATA / SATAII driver diskette, press <F2> to enter BIOS setup to set the option to RAID mode by following the detailed instruction of the “U[...]

3 RAID 0+1 (Stripe Mirroring) RAID 0 drives can be mirror ed using RAID 1 techniques, resulting in a RAID 0+1 solution for improved performance plus re siliency. The controller combines the performance of data striping (RAID 0) and the fault tolerance of disk mirroring (RAID 1). Data is striped across multiple drives and duplicated on another set o[...]

4 3. Please verify the status of your ha rd disks before you set up your new RAID array. WARN ING!! Please backup y our data first before y ou create RAID functions. In the process you create RAID, the sy stem will ask if y ou w ant to “Clear Disk Data” or not. It is recommended to select “Y es”, and then your fu ture data building w ill op[...]

1.3 Installing Windows ® 7 / 7 64-bit / Vista TM / Vista TM 64-bit / XP / XP 64-bit With RAID Functions If you want to install Windows ® 7 / 7 64-bit / Vista TM / Vista TM 64-bit / XP / XP 64-bit on your SA T A / SA T AII HDDs with RAID functions, ple a se follow below procedure s a ccording to the OS you install. 1.3.1 Installing Windows ® XP /[...]

6 6 6 6 6 NOTE. If you install Windows ® XP / XP 64-bit on IDE HDDs and want to manage (create, convert, delete, or rebuild) RAID functions on SA T A / SA T AII HDDs, you still need to set up “SA T A Operation Mode” to [RAID] in BIOS first. Then, plea se set the RAID configuration by using the Windows RAID installation guide part of the docume[...]

1.3.2 Installing Windows ® 7 / 7 64-bit / Vista TM / Vista TM 64-bit With RAID Functions If you wa nt to install Windows ® 7 / 7 64-bit / Vista TM / V ista TM 64-bit on your SA T A / SA T AII HDDs with RAID functions, plea se follow below steps. STEP 1: Set Up BIOS. A . Enter BIOS SETUP UTILITY Adva nced screen Storage Configuration. B. Set the ?[...]

8 1.4 Create Disk Array Power on your system. After adjusting the system BIOS to RAID mode, the below window appears. After rebooting your computer, wait until you see the RAID soft ware prompting you to press <F10>. The RAID prompt appears as a part of the s ystem POST and boot process prior to loading the OS. You have a few seconds to press[...]

9 Striping block size is given in kilobytes, and affect how data is arranged on the disk. It is recommended to leave this value at the default Optimal, which is 64KB, but the values can be between 8KB and 128KB (8, 16, 32, 64, and 128KB). Then, you have to assign the disks. The disks that you enabled from the RAID Config BIOS setup page appear in t[...]

10 After assigning your RAID array disks, press <F 7> to save your changes of RAID array disks. Depending on the platform used, the system can have one or more channels. In a typical system there is usually one adapter and multiple channels, and each channel has a slave and a master. The adapter / channel / master / slave status of each har d[...]

11 2. NVIDIA Windows RAID Installation Guide NVIDIA Windows RAID Installation Guide is an instruction for you to configure RAID functions by using NVIDIAMAN under Wi ndows environment. Please read this guide carefully and follow the instructions below to configure and manage RAID functions. For Windows XP / XP 64-bit and Windows 7 / 7 64-bit / Vist[...]

12 B. Creating RAID Arrays This section includes examples of using NVRAIDMAN for cr eating RAID arrays. If your motherboard is equipped with two SATA / SATAII ports, you may choose to use RAI D 0, RAID 1, or JBOD function with your motherboar d. If your motherboard is equipped with four SATA / SATAII ports, you may choos e to use RAID 0, RAI D 1, R[...]

13 the operation procedures are similar to the steps of creating RAID 0. Please do the following: A. Go to the system BIOS and make sure that th e drives that you want to use are RAID enabled. B. Boot to Windows and launch the NVRAIDMAN application. C. Create Array and the following screen will appear. D. Click Next and the following screen shot wi[...]

14 E. Click the RAID Mode list arrow and select Striping, and leave the “Stripe Size” with its default value as shown in the following screen shot. F. Click Next, and the following screen shot will appear. G. Select the two disks that you want to include in the stripe set.[...]

15 To create a striped array with more disks, select additional disks from the list. H. Click Next and the following screen shot will appear. I. Click Finish and the follow ing screen shot will appear. The RAID 0 is created successfully. C. Initializing NVRAID Array Disks Now that the two-disk array has been created, it needs to be partitioned and [...]

16 B. Double click on Administrative Tools . C. Double click on Computer Management . D. Click on Disk Management . The following screen is displayed. E. The 153.38 GB is for the two disk striped array that was created earlier. To create a partition on it, right click on the Unalloca ted partition and select New Partition. F. Follow the Wiz ard for[...]

17 D. Deleting a RAID Array NVRAIDMAN can be used to delete an Array. To d elete an Array, please do the following. A. Launch the NVRAIDMAN application and right click on the RAID array that you want to delete (assuming that you have a RAID arra y already created) as sho wn in the following screen shot. The above screen shot shows that there is a M[...]

18 B. Click Next and the following screen shot will appear. C. Click Finish and the array will be deleted and the following screen shot will appear showing all the free disks. A similar process can be applied to delet e any array created by NVIDIA RAID. E. Rebuilding a RAID Array Rebuilding is the process of restoring data to a ha rd drive from oth[...]

19 D. C lick Next. The Disk Selection page appears. E. Select the drive that you want to rebuild by clicking it from the list, then click Next. The Completing the NVIDIA Rebuild Array page appears.[...]

20 F. Click Finish. F. More About Rebuilding Array s Rebuilding Occurs in the Background The rebuilding process takes some time to complete, and occurs in the background so as not to affect the performance of the s ystem. Rebuilding Applies Onl y to RAID 1, RAID 0+1, or RAID 5 Arrays Rebuilding an array works only when using RAID 1, RAID 0+1, or RA[...]

21 NVRAIDMAN window indicates that the array is synchronizing. C. The synchronization process will start and it will be completed in a short period of time. 2.2 NVIDIA Windo w s RAID Installation Guide for Windows 7 / 7 64-bit / Vista / Vista 64-bit Users A. Enter Storage RAID driver is built in NVIDIA ALL in one driver provided in our support CD. [...]

22 Click “Create array”. Then you can start to build up RAID. B. Creating RAID Arrays Click Next and the following screen shot will appear.[...]

23 Select a configuration that best suits your storage needs. It is recommended to sel ect “Custom”. Click Next. Then, select the type of RAID array to create. You need to choose the RAID Mode first and click Next. Here we take Striping (RAID 0) for example to s how you how to use Storage to create Striping (RAID 0). If you plan to use Storage [...]

24 After you decide the RAID Mode, you are allowed t o select the Stripe Size. The default value of this item is 64K. Then click Next. Select the disks to add to the new RAID array, and click Next. Select the disk with data to preserve, and click Next.[...]

25 Click Next to confirm that you agree to use the default settings for RAID configurations. Click Finish to complete the steps of creating RAID array. C. Initializing NVRAID Array Disks Now that the two-disk array has been created, it needs to be partitioned and fo rmatted. A. Click on Start → Settings → Control Panel . B. Double click on Admi[...]

26 Right-click on the unallocated partition and select New Simple Volume. Follow the Wizard for setting up and formatting the pa rtition. Once that is done, you can star t using the newly created stripped array.[...]