More About Serial ATA RAID
Serial ATA
Serial ATA is the next generation of storage connectivity
that brings a number of benefits, such as a significantly
reduced size of Serial ATA cable, allowing for easier
installation and improved airflow within the system
case, which is particularly important in a more compact
chassis as well as greater data integrity and greater
data transfer bandwidth of up to 150MB/s.
Serial ATA also enables a reduced connector pin count,
with only seven pins versus the forty pins required
for an IDE interface. Serial ATA brings a reduction
in controller chip power consumption compared to Parallel
ATA, thus lowering the voltage interface-signaling requirement
and enabling reduced die size.
As the PC industry migrates towards Serial ATA as the
standard drive interface, VIA is at the forefront of
developing leading solutions to enable the transition.
RAID
RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is a new
approach to storage configuration that harnesses the
power of multiple hard drives working together, and
uses advanced data striping and mirroring techniques
to improve data integrity and access speed. Disk arrays
are groups of disk drives that work together to achieve
higher data-transfer and I/O rates than those provided
by single large drives, with a specialized controller
(an array controller) keeping track of how data is distributed
across the drives.
In Striping, data for a particular file is written
in segments to the different drives in the array rather
than being written to a single drive, and Mirroring
ensures no data is lost if a single drive (physical
disk) in the array should fail. Different RAID 'levels'
offer varying benefits to users, for example RAID Level
0 significantly increases hard drive read/write speeds,
while RAID Level 1 provides rock solid data integrity.
As with many other advances in PC technology, VIA is
leading the way for industry transitions by providing
advanced functionality and yet cost-effective solutions
to our customers. |
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