Asus PIKE 2108 - Manual (Page 35)

ASUS PIKE 2108 2-21
11. Select a second drive group from the Array With Free Space drop-down list,
and click Add to SPAN.
Both drive groups display in the right frame under Span.
12. When finish, click Next. The Virtual Drive Definition screen appears. You
use this screen to select the RAID level, strip size, read policy, and other
attributes for the new virtual drive(s).
13. If there are additional drive groups with three or more drives each, you can
add them to the virtual drive.
14. Change the virtual drive options from the defaults listed on the screen as
needed.
Here are brief explanations of the virtual drive options:
• RAID Level: The drop-down menu lists the possible RAID levels for the
virtual drive. Select RAID 50.
• Strip Size: The strip size specifies the size of the segment written to
each disk in a RAID configuration. You can set the strip size up to 64 KB.
A larger strip size produces higher read performance. If your computer
regularly performs random read requests, choose a smaller strip size.
The default is 64 KB.
• Access Policy: Select the type of data access that is allowed for this
virtual drive:
◊ RW: Allow read/write access. This is the default.
◊ Read Only: Allow read-only access.
◊ Blocked: Do not allow access.
• Read Policy: Specify the read policy for this virtual drive:
◊ Normal: This disables the read ahead capability.
◊ Ahead: This enables read ahead capability, which allows the
controller to read sequentially ahead of requested data and to store
the additional data in cache memory, anticipating that the data will be
needed soon. This speeds up reads for sequential data, but there is
little improvement when accessing random data. This is the default.
• Write Policy: Specify the write policy for this virtual drive:
◊ Write Through: In Write Through mode the controller sends a data
transfer completion signal to the host when the drive subsystem has
received all of the data in a transaction.
◊ Always Write Back: In Writeback mode the controller sends a data
transfer completion signal to the host when the controller cache has
received all of the data in a transaction. This setting is recommended
in Standard mode.