The Basics What is RAID? Advantages of RAID Disadvantages of RAID Different Types of RAID Configurations RAID 0 (Data Striping) RAID 1 (Data Mirroring) RAID 0+1 (Data Striping and Data Mirroring) Drivers Creating a Driver Disk Installing Drivers Installing Hard Disks Creating a RAID Array Configuring BIOS Using FastBuildTM Creating with Auto Setup Quick Create a RAID 0 Array Quick Create a RAID 1 Array Quick Create a RAID 0+1 Array Creating with Define Array Rebuilding a RAID 1/RAID 0+1 Array Deleting Arrays Viewing Drive Assignments Using your RAID Drive Partitioning and Formatting Under Windows XP Installing an OS on a RAID Drive Installing Windows 98/ME Installing Windows 2000/XP Using Hard Drives as Non-RAID Introduction About this Guide This document provides a brief step-by-step guide for beginners in how to set up a RAID drive using the onboard Promise® PDC20378 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 FastTrak 378 Quick Start Guide provided on the motherboard’s Support CD. 1.2 The Basics 1.2.1 What 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. 1.2.2 Advantages 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.

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