Intel S2600IP Software User Guide for Windows* - Page 17

RAID Features In a RAID-Ready configuration, the user can take their single system drive and turn it into a supported RAID volume by using the Intel® RSTe GUI application. This process does not require the reinstallation of the operating system. All applications and data will remain intact. The following are examples of RAID level creations that will be supported by Intel® RSTe:  Individual pass-through to 2 16 drives for RAID 0  Individual pass-through to 2 drive RAID 1  Individual pass-through to 4 drive RAID 10  Individual pass-through to 3 to 6 drive RAID 5 2.5.11 Instant Initialization Intel® RSTe allows a newly created volume to be used immediately (no reboot required), protecting newly written data and creating parity data concurrently. For a RAID 5 configuration that consists of 3 or 4 drives, the RAID volume will be shown as normal as soon as the volume is created. Parity will be computed and written with every RAID 5 write activity. For a RAID 5 configuration that consists of 5 or more drives, the parity initialization will begin as soon as the volume is created. This is done to improve the operational performance of RAID 5 volumes. 2.5.12 RAID Level Migrations The RAID level migration feature in Intel® RSTe product enables and provides the ability to convert the contents of a drive (attached to the AHCI or SCU controller) into a RAID volume (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, or RAID 10 ). The RAID level migration feature also supports the ability to migrate from a one RAID volume to another. The size of the hard drives determines how much time is required to complete the migration but the system will remain fully functional during the migration process. The only limitation is that some disk-intensive tasks may have slower performance during a RAID migration. Note: Single volume per array only. This is dependent on required capacity and implicit array expansion. The following are some examples of RAID level migrations supported by Intel® RSTe:  N-drive RAID 0 to N+1 - 32 drive RAID 5 (where N can be 2 to 31)  2-drive RAID 1 to 3 - 32 drive RAID 5  4-drive RAID 10 to 4 - 32 drive RAID 5 2.5.13 RAID Reconfiguration (Stripe size) Intel® RSTe will provide the ability to change stripe size on existing volumes (migration required). Intel® RSTe will support a stripe size migration in conjunction with a RAID level migration. Note: Migration supports stripe sizes for the respective RAID levels supported. Stripe Size Support for (values are in Kilobytes):  RAID 0 volumes - 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024  RAID 10 volumes - 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024  RAID 5 volumes - 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024 2.5.14 Expanded Stripe Size Intel® RSTe will support the ability to expand the RAID volume stripe size for the following RAID volumes (values are in Kilobytes):  RAID 0 volumes - 256, 512, 1024  RAID 10 volumes - 256, 512, 1024  RAID 5 volumes - 256, 512, 1024 8 Intel® RSTe User's Guide