MaximumPC 2004 11

GET THE MOST FROM

Matrix RAID

Intel’s new RAID controller lets

you run two different arrays

using just two drives

BY JOSH NOREM

A

n all-new storage technology called Matrix RAID

has emerged from Intel’s skunkworks, and it offers

a feature we’ve wanted for a long time—the ability

to create RAID 0 and RAID 1 volumes on a single RAID

array using just two hard drives. Matrix RAID is avail-

able on Intel’s new 915 and 925 chipsets, which include

the ICH6R south bridge. Imagine: You can take one pair

of drives (also known as an array), and create a redun-

dant mirrored volume for your OS and important docu-

ments, and a high-performance striped volume for apps,

games, and any other applications where speed is more

important than data security.

Although the technology is straightforward, the

documentation that came with our ICH6R mother-

board forced us to figure things out for ourselves.

We’ll walk you through configuring a basic Matrix

RAID array, so that you won’t have to muddle around

like we did. We used a pair of Western Digital 74GB

Raptors for our example, but Matrix RAID works with

any pair of identical Serial ATA hard drives. Just adjust

the size of your volumes to suit your needs.

TIME TO COMPLETION

HOURS MINUTES

MA XIMUMPC

00:45

RAID: Redundant array of inexpensive disks —a system that

allows you to combine multiple drives in a single partition for

either data redundancy, added performance, or a combination

of the two.

ARRAY: An array is a group of hard drives. For RAID, a minimum

of two hard drives is required for it to be considered an “array.”

VOLUME: A disk volume is any portion of a drive or array that

has its own drive letter.

STRIPING: Striping is the term for a RAID 0 array, where data

is broken up into small chunks and written to both drives simul-

taneously, resulting in a pattern of data “stripes” across both

drives. Striping data across two drives speeds up transfer times,

but also doubles your chances of data loss due to drive failure.

MIRRORING: This technique is employed in a RAID 1 array,

and involves all data being simultaneously written to two hard

drives so the drives are in effect mirror images of each other.

Mirroring greatly reduces your chance of data loss in the event

of a drive failure.

Build a volume for reliability

The first thing we need to do is create a mirrored partition to hold Windows

XP. Once the PC boots, press Ctrl+i to access the RAID configuration utility.

Select RAID 1 and choose the drives to be used. You could choose RAID 0 at

this point since you will also be creating a volume for that, but whichever

array you configure first will be your primary drive. We allocated 40GB of

space for our OS and apps—remember, this will consume 40GB of each

drive. That means there is roughly 60GB left over in our test array, which

we’ll use for our striped volume.

STEP 1

NOVEMBER 2004 MA XIMUMPC 

Words to RAID by

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