PCISA-MARK CPU CardE.1 IntroductionThe ALi M5283 SATA RAID chipset can control parallel ATA (PATA) and serial ATA(SATA) disks. The ALi controller supports PATA UDMA transfer mode up to mode 6 andSATA 1 disk drives. The ALi M5283 also has a cost-effective RAID functionality that canincrease the data read/write speed and provide protection to data by distributing mirroredduplicates of data onto two disk drives (RAID 1).CAUTION:A configured RAID volume (which may consist of multiplehard drives) appears to an operating system as a contingentstorage space. The operating system will not be able todistinguish the physical disk drives contained in a RAIDconfiguration.E.1.1 PrecautionsOne key benefit a RAID configuration brings is that a single hard drive can fail within aRAID array without damaging data. With RAID1 array, a failed drive can be replaced andthe RAID configuration restored.WARNING!Irrecoverable data loss occurs if a working drive is removedwhen trying to remove a failed drive. It is stronglyrecommended to mark the physical connections of all SATAdisk drives. Drive locations can be identified by attachingstickers to the drive bays. If a drive member of a RAID arrayshould fail, the failed drive can then be correctly identified.Page 208 IEI® Technology, Corp.
