Raid is a disk array that uses multiple disks to ensure data security.
In the RAID family, RAID 0 and RAID 1 are the most widely used in personal computers. After all, few individual users are willing to use four or more hard disks to build RAID 0+ 1 or other hard disk arrays, so here are only two RAID methods. We choose an upgraded KT7A-RAID motherboard that supports IDE-RAID function, and introduce the installation of IDE-RAID step by step. Upgrade KT7A-RAID integrated HighPoint 370 chip, supporting RAID 0, 1, 0+ 1.
Hard disk is indispensable for RAID. RAID 0 and RAID 1 have different requirements for disks. RAID 1 (mirrored) disk mirroring generally requires two (or more) hard disks to have the same capacity, while RAID 0 (striped) disks generally do not have this requirement. Of course, it is ideal to choose a hard disk with similar capacity or even identical performance. In order to facilitate the test, we selected two 60GB Seagate Cool Fish Ⅳ hard disks (Barracuda ATA,No. ST36002 1A). The system adopts Duron 750MHz CPU, 2× 128MB firewood wind gold bar SDRAM and GeForce2 Pro graphics card, which should be said to be a common configuration. We also want to know the system requirements needed to build RAID.
Creation of 1.RAID 0
first step
First, back up the data on the hard disk. Many users do not attach importance to backup, especially some careless individual users. Creating RAID is a dangerous operation for data. If you are not careful, you may destroy the data of the whole hard disk. This is especially true for RAID 0, which we introduced first. When RAID 0 is created, the data on all disks in the array will be erased, including the hard disk partition table. Therefore, it is necessary to prepare a Windows 98 startup disk with Fdisk and Format commands, which is also an important thing to pay attention to in this step.
Second step
Set the jumpers of the two hard disks as Master, and connect them to the IDE3 and IDE4 ports of KT7A-RAID respectively (controlled by the HighPoint370 chip on the motherboard). Since RAID 0 will rebuild the partition table of two hard disks, we don't need to consider the order of hard disk connection (we will see that this order is very important when creating RAID 1).
Third step
Set BIOS and turn on ATA RAID controller. We enter the integrated peripheral option in the BIOS of the upgraded KT7A-RAID motherboard and turn on the ATA 100 RAID IDE controller. The upgrade technology suggests changing the boot order to ATA 100 RAID. In fact, we found that this is not feasible in the process of system installation. Isn't there a partition hard disk to boot? So we still set the floppy drive as the first choice.
Fourth step
The next setup step is to create the core content of RAID 0.
1. Restart the computer after setting the system BIOS, and the hard disk will not be reported again during the boot test.
2. Disk management will be taken over by HighPoint 370 chip.
3. The following are very critical HighPoint 370 BIOS settings. Press "Ctrl" and "H" at the same time in the HighPoint 370 disk scanning interface.
4. The first thing to do after entering the HighPoint 370 BIOS setup interface is to select "Create RAID" to create RAID.
5. Select RAID mode in "Array Mode". Here you can see the options of RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+ 1 and Span. Here we select RAID 0.
6. when 6. After selecting RAID mode, it will automatically exit to the previous menu to select "Disk Drive". Generally speaking, it is good to enter directly.
7. The next setting is the stripe unit size, and the default value is 64kB. You can't ignore any special requirements.
8. Then there is the "Start Creating" option. Before you press the "Y" key, please carefully consider whether there is any important data on the hard disk. This is your last chance! Once you start creating RAID, all data on the hard disk will be erased.
9. After creation, specify a startup disk and select one.
Press "Esc" to exit, and of course press "Y" to confirm.
HighPoint 370 BIOS does not provide a function similar to "exit without saving", and it is irreversible after modifying the settings.
Step five
After restarting the computer again, we can see the words "Striping Array #0 # 0 (RAID 0)" on the screen. Insert the startup disk made before and start DOS. Open the Fdisk program, huh? Why is only one hard disk visible? Yes, RAID array has been regarded as a whole hard disk. For the operating system, RAID is completely transparent, so we don't have to worry about the management of RAID disks, which are all done by the control chip. Next, partition according to the method of ordinary single hard disk, and you will find that the capacity of this hard disk has "changed". Calculate carefully, yes, the total capacity is the sum of two hard disks! We can compare the reading and writing of RAID 0 to a zipper, which separates the data on the two hard disks and reads the data faster without wasting disk space. Don't forget to activate the primary partition after partitioning and formatting.
Step 6
Choosing an operating system is very confusing for us. HighPoint370 chip provides driver support for Windows 98/NT/2000/XP. Considering that the RAID function is aimed at relatively advanced users, we chose the English version of Windows XP Professional, which has better support for new hardware (the English version is mainly to facilitate the later Winbench test, and you can use the Chinese version of the operating system when using RAID). Windows 2000 is also a good choice, but the hardware support is obviously not as good as Windows XP Professional.
Step 7
For a computer with RAID, the installation of the operating system is different from that under normal circumstances. Let's take a look at the chart, which appears after Windows XP completes the first step of "file copy" restart. The installer will prompt "Press F6 to install SCSI devices or RAID disks" in English. This process is very short, and users tend to ignore the prompts at the bottom of the screen.
After pressing F6, the installation option appears. Select "s" to install the RAID control chip driver, and select "Enter" not to install.
Pressing the "S" key will prompt you to insert the RAID chip drive disk.
Type Enter, and the installer will automatically search the program on the drive disk, select the program with "WinXP", and then press Enter.
If the provided version is inconsistent with the built-in driver version of Windows XP Profesional, the installer will prompt the user to choose.
Press "s" to install the driver provided by floppy disk, and press "Enter" to install the driver included with Windows XP Professional. After pressing "S", you need to confirm again, and this time press "Enter" (this ... too many confirmations, hehe). The next step is normal system installation, which is no different from normal installation.
So much for the installation of RAID 0. Now let's talk about the installation of RAID 1. Compared with RAID 0, the installation process of RAID 1 is much simpler, and it is not destructive if it is operated correctly.
2. Creation of RAID1
Although it is completely different from RAID 0 in principle, the installation and setting process of RAID 1 is similar to RAID 0, and the main difference is the setting in HighPoint 370 BIOS. In order to avoid duplication, we only pay attention to this part of the settings:
After entering the HighPoint 370 BIOS, select "Create RAID" to create:
1. Click Enter in Array Mode, and select the second item "Mirror for data security (RAID 1)" in the RAID mode option.
2. Then, when selecting the source disk, we remind the user again: be careful not to make a mistake.
3. Then the choice of target disk, which is what we call mirror disk or backup disk.
4. Then start writing.
5. After the creation is completed, the BIOS will prompt to make a mirror image, which is a long process.
6. It took us about 45 minutes to make a 60GB image, so we created RAID 1.
RAID 1 will copy the data from the primary disk to the mirror disk, so you need to be very careful when building RAID 1. Don't confuse the master disk with the mirror disk, otherwise the result will be tragic. RAID 1 can be created on two hard disks with no data, or it can be added on a hard disk with an operating system installed, which is much more convenient than RAID 0 (except that the process of making a mirror image is long). After creation, we tried to unplug one of the hard disks, and the HighPoint370 BIOS issued a warning. Press "Esc", and the other hard disk takes the responsibility of the original disk, and all the data is intact.
For adding RAID 1 to the hard disk with the operating system installed, we suggest the following steps: open the control chip in the BIOS → start the operating system to install the HighPoint 370 driver → shut down the computer, connect the source disk and the mirror disk to port IDE3 and port 4 respectively → enter the HighPoint 370 BIOS to set RAID 1 (see the above steps) → restart the system to complete the creation.
We conducted a simple test on two RAID types. Although the test results of RAID 0 are somewhat puzzling, it still feels much faster than a single hard disk in actual use, especially when Windows XP Professional starts very fast and the progress bar flashes by. As for the instability of the transmission rate curve, we estimate that it has something to do with platform selection. After all, integrated chips are easily disturbed when doing such high data throughput work. But even so, we can still see that the data transmission rate of RAID 0 system has reached a very high level, once close to 60 MB/s. Compared with RAID 0, although the performance of RAID 1 system is not obviously improved compared with that of single disk system, we find that the working curve of RAID 1 is very stable and rarely fluctuates.
Let's take a look at the disk test results in Winbench99 2.0, which is clear at a glance.
For users and operating systems, RAID 0 and 1 are transparent and do not affect any operation, just like using a hard disk.