ASROCK 775Dual-880Pro Quick guide

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Guide to SATA Hard Disks
Installation and RAID Configuration
1. Guide to SATA Hard Disks Installation ............................ 2
1.1 Serial ATA (SATA) Hard Disks Installation ............... 2
1.2 Making An SATA Driver Diskette ............................... 3
2. Guide to RAID Configurations ......................................... 4
2.1 Introduction of RAID ............................................... 4
2.2 RAID Configuration Precautions ............................ 6
2.3 BIOS Configuration Utility ....................................... 7
2.3.1 Enter BIOS Configuration Utility ................ 7
2.3.2 Create Disk Array ...................................... 8
2.3.3 Delete Disk Array ..................................... 13
2.3.4 Select Boot Array ..................................... 14
3. Installation of Windows 2000 / Windows XP ................ 15

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1. Guide to SATA Hard Disks Installation
1.1 Serial ATA (SATA) Hard Disks Installation
This motherboard adopts VIA VT8237 southbridge chipset that
supports Serial ATA (SATA) hard disks. You may install SATA hard
disks on this motherboard for internal storage devices. This
section will guide you to install the SATA hard disks.
STEP 1: Install the SATA hard disks into the drive bays of your
chassis.
STEP 2: Connect the SATA power cable to the SATA hard disk.
STEP 3: Connect one end of the SATA data cable to the
motherboard’s SATA connector.
STEP 4: Connect the other end of the SATA data cable to the
SATA hard disk.

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1.2 Making An SATA Driver Diskette
If you want to install Windows 2000 or Windows XP on your
SATA HDDs, you will need to make an SATA driver diskette before
you start the OS installation.
STEP 1: Insert the ASRock Support CD into your optical drive to
boot your system. (Do NOT insert any floppy diskette
into the floppy drive at this moment!)
STEP 2: During POST at the beginning of system boot-up, press
<F11> key, and then a window for boot devices
selection appears. Please select CD-ROM as the boot
device.
STEP 3: When you see the message on the screen, “Do you
want to generate Serial ATA driver diskette [YN]?”,
press <Y>.
STEP 4: Then you will see these messages,
Please insert a diskette into the floppy drive.
WARNING! Formatting the floppy diskette will
lose ALL data in it!
Start to format and copy files [YN]?
Please insert a floppy diskette into the floppy drive, and
press <Y>.
STEP 5: The system will start to format the floppy diskette and
copy SATA drivers into the floppy diskette.
Once you have the SATA driver diskette ready, you may start to
install Windows 2000 / Windows XP on your system directly
without setting the RAID configuration on your system, or you
may start to use “VT8237 SATA RAID BIOS” to set RAID 0 / RAID 1
/ JBOD configuration before you install the OS. You may also set
the RAID configuration by using “VIA RAID Tool” in Windows
environment. Please refer to the document in the Support CD,
“Guide to VIA RAID Tool”, which is located in the folder at the
following path:
.. \ VIA RAID Tool

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2. Guide to RAID Configurations
2.1 Introduction of RAID
This motherboard adopts VIA VT8237 south bridge chipset that
integrates RAID controller supporting RAID 0 / RAID 1 / JBOD
function with two independent Serial ATA (SATA) channels. This
section will introduce the basic knowledge of RAID, and the guide
to configure RAID 0, RAID 1, and JBOD settings.
RAID
The term “RAID” stands for “Redundant Array of Independent
Disks”, which is a method combining two or more hard disk drives
into one logical unit. For optimal performance, please install
identical drives of the same model and capacity when creating a
RAID set.
RAID 0 (Data Striping)
RAID 0 is called data striping that optimizes two identical hard disk
drives to read and write data in parallel, interleaved stacks. It will
improve data access and storage since it will double the data
transfer rate of a single disk alone while the two hard disks
perform the same work as a single drive but at a sustained data
transfer rate.
WARNING!!
Although RAID 0 function can improve the access performance, it
does not provide any fault tolerance. Hot-Plug any HDDs of the
RAID 0 Disk will cause data damage or data loss.

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RAID 1 (Data Mirroring)
RAID 1 is called data mirroring that copies and maintains an
identical image of data from one drive to a second drive. It
provides data protection and increases fault tolerance to the
entire system since the disk array management software will
direct all applications to the surviving drive as it contains a
complete copy of the data in the other drive if one drive fails.
JBOD (Spanning)
A spanning disk array is equal to the sum of all drives. Spanning
stores data onto a drive until it is full then proceeds to store files
onto the next drive in the array. When any member disk fails, it
will affect the entire array. JBOD is not really a RAID, and it does
not support fault tolerance.

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2.2 RAID Configurations Precautions
1. Please use two new drives if you are creating a RAID 0
(striping) array for performance. It is recommended to
use two SATA drives of the same size. If you use two
drives of different sizes, the smaller capacity hard disk
will be the base storage size for each drive. For
example, if one hard disk has an 80GB storage capacity
and the other hard disk has 60GB, the maximum storage
capacity for the 80GB-drive becomes 60GB, and the
total storage capacity for this RAID 0 set is 120GB.
2. You may use two new drives, or use an existing drive
and a new drive to create a RAID 1 (mirroring) array for
data protection (the new drive must be of the same size
or larger than the existing drive). If you use two drives
of different sizes, the smaller capacity hard disk will be
the base storage size. For example, if one hard disk has
an 80GB storage capacity and the other hard disk has
60GB, the maximum storage capacity for the RAID 1 set
is 60GB.
3. Please verify the status of your hard disks before you
set up your new RAID array.

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2.3 BIOS Configuration Utility
2.3.1 Enter BIOS Configuration Utility
After the system powers on, the following information will appear on
the screen. Press ‘Tab’ key to enter BIOS configuration utility.
The main interface of BIOS configuration utility is as below:

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2.3.2 Create Disk Array
1. Within the main interface, use the up and down arrow
key to highlight the Create Array command and press
<Enter> to call out the list of creation steps.
2. Highlight the Array Mode and press <Enter>, then a list
of array modes will appear. Just highlight the target
array mode that you want to create, and press <Enter>
to confirm the selection.

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3. There are two methods to create a disk array. One
method is “Auto Setup”, and another is “Select Disk
Drives”. Select “Auto Setup” to allow BIOS to select
the disk drives and create array automatically. Select
“Select Disk Drives” to let user select the array drives
manually. When using Select Disk Drives method, the
channel column will be activated. Just highlight the target
drives that you want to use and press <Enter> to select
them respectively. When all drives have been selected,
press <Esc> to go back to the creation steps menu.

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Create RAID 0
If RAID 0 array is selected in step 2, user can also select a block size
for the array. Use the arrow key to highlight the “Block Size” and
press <Enter>. Then the list of available block size will popup. The
block size can be selected from 4K to 64K Bytes.
Use the arrow key to highlight the Start Create Process and press
<Enter>, then a warning message will appear. Press Yto finish the
creation, or press Nto cancel the creation.
Important note:
The content of the hard drive will be destroyed after array creation.

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Create RAID 1
The data on disk drives will be destroyed if user uses “Auto
Setup” to create RAID 1. But you can reserve the data on source
drive if you use “Select Disk Drives” to select the source and
the mirror drive.
Press “y” to copy data of source to mirror drive. There is a
limitation when using this feature. The capacity of mirror drive
must be greater or equal to the source drive; otherwise the RAID
1 can’t be created and a error message will appear: “Error:
mirror’s size is smaller than source!!! Press ESC return”. If user
does not want to duplicate data, the data on the source and the
mirror drive will be destroyed.

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Create JBOD
The data on disk drives will be destroyed if user uses “Auto
Setup” to create a JBOD. However, you can reserve the data on
the first disk drive of a JBOD array if you use “Select Disk
Drives” to select disk drives
The data on the first disk drive will be reserved and the other disk
drives in JBOD will be expanded behind the first disk drive and
become free space.
Expand Span (JBOD) Array function is not available if VT8237
only supports 2 SATA ports.

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2.3.3 Delete Disk Array
User can delete a specific RAID that has been created. Following
are the steps to delete a created disk array.
1. Use arrow key to highlight Delete Array item in main menu
interface, and press <Enter>. The channel column will be
activated.
2. Use arrow key to highlight the target disk drive and press
<Enter>. A warning message will appear. Press Yto delete a
specific array or press N to cancel.
Delete a disk array will destroy all the data on the disk array
except RAID 1. When a RAID 1 is deleted, the data on these two
hard disk drives will be reserved and become two normal disks.

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2.3.4 Select Boot Array
User can select a disk array as boot device if user wants to boot
operating system from an array. Boot disk array may not be
selected if user does not boot the Operating System from the disk
array. Use the arrow key to highlight the “Select Boot Disk” item
then press <Enter>. The channel column will be activated. Just
use arrow key to highlight the target disk array then press
<Enter>. If user select a disk array that has a boot mark and
press <Enter>, then its boot setting will be canceled.

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3. Installation of Windows 2000 / Windows XP
For the installation of Windows 2000 or Windows XP, please insert
Windows 2000 or Windows XP CD into the optical drive. Then remove
the floppy diskette, and reboot the system. At the very beginning, you
will see the message at the bottom of the screen, “Press F6 if you need
to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver....”
At this moment, please press <F6> key and the following information will
appear.

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Please press <S> key to install the SATA driver diskette that you
previously made. You will see the instruction as followed.
After inserting the SATA HDD driver diskette and pressing <Enter> key,
you will see the different versions of the SATA HDD drivers for you to
install. Please use arrow keys to move the highlight bar to make your
selection according to the OS you use.
When the installation of the SATA HDD drivers is complete, please
continue to follow the instructions of Windows 2000 or Windows XP for
the proper installation.