Page 3of 20
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. All rights reserved.
1Introduction
1.1About this Guide
This document provides a brief step-by-step guide for beginners in how to set up a RAID
drive using the onboard ITE8212F RAID controller, operating under the Windows XP
environment. This guide was designed to only cover the basic operations in setting up
RAID. Should this document not cover what you need, please refer to the ITE8212 RAID
User’s Manual provided on the motherboard’s Support CD.
1.2The Basics
1.2.1What is RAID?
A RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) controller lets you combine multiple hard
disks to simulate a single drive.The drive created will properties different to that of the
individual drives.
1.2.2Advantages of RAID
The obvious advantage of using a RAID configuration is the ability to create drives with
larger capacity.However, since multiple drives are used, data can be stored in such a way
that it spans over many disks, thus the information can be accessed by the disks
simultaneously, significantly improving data access times.
1.2.3Disadvantages of RAID
Using many drives has adisadvantage. The probability of a single drive failing out of many
drives is much higher than that of one failing out of only one.This results in a greater
chance of losing the information on your disks. There are ways however, to minimize this
effect, even making it more reliable than using single disks.
1.3Different Types of RAID Configurations
There are many different ways in which RAID can be configured, each with its set of
advantages and disadvantages. The ITE8212F controller supports RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID
0+1 and JOBD configurations, each one is described below.
1.3.1RAID 0 (Striping)
RAID 0 works by breaking down data and spreading it over multiple disk drives. RAID 0
does not protect data from failure, and due to the way it stores data, a fault on one drive
would result in failure of the entire array. It does however, have vast improvements in both
reading and writing speeds, with the theoretical speed proportional to the number of disks
used in the array. It is also fairly efficient in using disk space, with its size is equal to the
size of the smallest disk multiplied by the number of disks.
1.3.2RAID 1 (Mirroring)
RAID 1 works by maintaining an identical copy ofthe data ofone drive onanother. If either
of these drives should fail, no information is lost as the second drive will always contain an
identical copy of the other. A RAID 1 system can be recovered by simply replacing the
