Creating and Deleting RAID Sets

Creating and deleting RAID sets must be performed in the BIOS for operating systems other than Windows 2000 and XP. For 2000 and XP, RAID sets can be created and managed by either the BIOS utility or the SATARaid GUI. See section 0 RAID Set Management Under Windows 2000 & XP for information on configuring RAID Sets using the SATARaid GUI.

During bootup, a screen similar to that below will appear for about 5 seconds. Press CTRL+S or the F4 key to enter the BIOS RAID utility.

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The RAID Utility menu screen will be displayed. A brief description of each section is presented on the next page.

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Main Menu

The Main Menu in the upper left corner is used to choose the operation to be performed. The selections are:

Create RAID Set

Delete RAID Set

Rebuild RAID1 Set

Resolve Conflicts

Low Level Format

Logical Drive Info

Create RAID Set is used to create a new RAID Set or for allocating spare drives to a RAID 1 set.

Delete RAID Set is used to delete a RAID Set or to deallocate a spare RAID 1 drive.

Rebuild RAID 1 Set is used to initiate the rebuild of a RAID 1 set after, for example, a drive in the Set has been replaced.

Resolve Conflicts is used to automatically find the member drives of a RAID set which has been disrupted (physical drives swapped around, for example) and restore the Set to proper operation.

Low Level Format allows a single drive to have its data completely wiped out. Drives assigned to Sets or allocated as spares cannot be low level formatted.

Logical Drive Info shows the current configuration of each RAID set, allocated spare, and unallocated physical drive attached to the SATA host adapter.

These operations are detailed in the pages that follow.

 

Help Window

This window displays context-sensitive help and status messages.

 

Physical Drive Information

This window displays the model number and capacities of the drives physically attached to the SATA host adapter.

 

Logical Drive Information

This window displays a list of devices reported to the system BIOS.

 

Command Line

The bottom line of the display lists the currently active command keys:

Up and Down arrows select the menu item or action

ESC takes the user to the previous menu

Enter selects the highlighted choice

Ctrl-E exits the utility

Other keys may be active depending upon the currently selected action.