Serial-ATA

RAID Card

Version 1.0
 Contents

Features …………...........……………………………….P.4

Specifications …………...........……………………………….P.5

Package Content...... …………………………………….P.5

System Requirement …………………………………….P.6

Driver Installation …………………………………….…....P.6

Install Serial-ATA Host Card GUI Utility………………………...P.16

Starting the Guide of BIOS Configuration ……………….….....P.19

RAID Explained………………………………………….P.31

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Overview

Serial ATA is the next-generation internal storage inter-connect,

designed to replace parallel ATA technology. Serial ATA is the
proactive evolution of the ATA interface from a parallel bus to serial
bus architecture. This architecture overcomes the electrical
constraints that are increasing the difficulty of continued speed
enhancements for the classic parallel ATA bus.

Introduction

The PCI SATA Host Card is PCI Serial-ATAⅡ phase one IDE
Controller Card which provides an efficient and economical way for
users increasing the speed or fault-tolerance of their PC. It can
upgrade your desktop computer to have dual internal Serial ATA
channels with NCQ, TCQ and hot plugging features. It is fully
compliant Serial ATA ports on the device side to access Serial ATA
storage media such as hard disk drives, CD-RW and DVD-ROM
drives.

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Features
The Serial-ATA PCI card is a true 32-bit PCI-Bus Serial-ATA card. It
supports the following I/O feature.

‧ Fully compatible with PCI Spec. Ver2.3 standard

‧ Serial ATA Specifications 1.0a compatible
‧ Serial ATA II Specifications 1.0 compatible
(Extensions to Serial ATA 1.0a)
‧ Provides dual Serial ATA channels (up to 2 drives)
‧ Serial ATA maximum transfer rate of 1.5 GB/s
‧ Serial ATA Disk RAID 0/1/JBOD support
‧ Integrated PCI DMA engines
‧ SATA hot plug/unplug hardware support
‧ Implements Power Management support.
‧ Serial ATA TCQ and NCQ commands support.
‧ Serial ATA RAID Manager Configuration Utility support
‧ Supports 48-bit LBA (Logical Block Addressing) for hard drives
‧ larger than 137GB

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Specifications
Interface: PCI 32 bit/66 MHz
Mode: Serial ATA II phase one
Controller: INITIO INI1622
RAID: RAID 0 (Striping) and RAID 1 (Mirroring)
Channel: Two internal Serial ATA ports
‧ Supports Native Command Queuing (NCQ)
‧ Supports tagged command queuing (TCQ)
O.S. Support: Windows2000/XP/2003/ and Linux 2.4x, 2.6x
Environment:
Operation temperature: 0℃~57℃
Storage temperature:-20℃~85℃
Operation humidity: 5℃~95% RH

Package Content
Check if the following items are present and in good condition upon
opening your package. Contract your retailer if any of the items is
damaged or missing.

1. Serial-ATA PCI Host Controller × 1

2. Serial-ATA Cable x 1
3. CD Driver x 1
4. User Manual x 1

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System Requirements
z Available PCI slot
z Serial-ATA driver
z Serial-ATA cables
z Driver support Windows 98SE / ME / 2000 / XP and Linux 2.2

Driver Installation
‹ Windows 2000/XP/2003 Fresh Installation

Follow the instructions in this section if you are performing a new

installation of Windows 2000/XP/2003 and you wish to boot from a
device attached to the SATA PCI Card.

1. Power off the system. Insert the SATA host card into an available
PCI slot. Connect Serial ATA cable(s) between the SATA host
card and the Serial ATA device(s). Power up the system.

2. Copy all files from directory into the diskette. Put your Windows
2000/XP/2003 CD into the CD-ROM/DVD drive, or the 2000 / XP /
2003
[ Ex : \Serial-ATA\Initio\Driver\ ]

3. Boot diskette #1 in the floppy drive if your system cannot boot from
the CD.
4. Install Step by Step

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4.1 Press [ F6 ] for third party SCSI or driver installation at the
beginning of text mode installation.

4.2 Press [ S ] when setup asks if you want to specify an

additional device, and insert the diskette which you had
copied.

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 4.3 Press [ Enter ] and select [ INITIO INIC 162X S-ATA Adapter
For windows OS ].

4.4 Press [ Enter ] again when prompted to continue on with text

mode setup.

5. Follow the setup instructions to select your choice for partition and
file system.

6. After setup examines your disks, it will copy files from the CD to
the hard drive selected above and restart the system. After restart
the setup process will resume to finish the installation.

7. Once the operating system installation has completed you can

follow the instructions in section 4 to verify controller was installed
correctly.

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‹ Windows 98SE / ME Installation

1. Select the selection of [ Specify the location of the driver ] and

click the [ NEXT ] button.

2. Choose the [ Specify a location ] and assign the SATA PCI card
driver’ s location. ( path : \Serial-ATA\Initio\Driver\ )

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3. Press the [ NEXT ] button for installs the driver.

4. Press [ Finish ] button for finish the installing.

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5. You can verify the driver is installed normally or not on Device
Manager.

‹ Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 Installation

1. Choose the selection of [ No, not this time ] for don’ t connect to
Windows Update and press [ NEXT ] button.

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2. Choose the item of [ Install from a list or specific location ] and
click [ NEXT ] button to continue.

3. Select the [ Include this location in the search ] and assign the
162x driver’ s location for which system by [ Browse ] key.
( path : \Serial-ATA\Initio\Driver\ )

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4. Press the button of [ Continue Anyway ] for installs the software.

5. Click [ Finish ] button to finish the installing.

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6. And then the Initio Raid Interface will be found by hardware wizard.

7. Choose the item of [ install the software automatically ] and click

[ NEXT ] button to continue.

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8. Press the button of [ Continue Anyway ] for installs the software.

9. Click [ Finish ] button to finish the installing of Initio Raid Interface.

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10. You can see [ Initio INIC162x S-ATA Raid Controller ] and
[ Initio Raid Interface ] list in [ SCSI and RAID Controllers ] on
Device Manager that means installation successfully.

Install Serial-ATA Host Card GUI Utility

1. Click the Setup.exe file to install the application of RAID Manager
and driver.

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2. Click the [ Next ] button.

3. Click the [ Next ] button to install a different folder by press the

[ Browse ] button, the button of [ Disk Cost ] provides the disk
space for user to choice.

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4. Click the [ Next ] button to confirm the installation.

5. Click the [ Close ] button, it has been successfully installed.

6. Restart the system.

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Starting the Guide of BIOS Configuration
During boot up the system, the following BIOS banner displays as the
below

1. Press [ Ctrl + R ] key to run the SATA Host Card BIOS utility.

-----Press < Ctrl + R > to enter RAID utility------

-----Press < ESC > to continue-----

2. In the BIOS Setup Utility, the configuration utility associates each

hard drive with a single logical drive. If logical drives have already
been configured, the BIOS utility doesn’ t change their
configuration.

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Create RAID

RAID 0

1. The stripe size parameter specifies the size of the segment

written to each disk in a RAID configuration. You can set the
stripe size to 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, or 256 Kbytes. The default is
8 Kbytes. A larger stripe size produces higher read
performance. If your computer regularly performs random
read requests, choose a smaller stripe size.

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2. You can decide to expand RAID 0 to maximum capacity or not,
as below.

3. The RAID list will display the RAID 0’ s information includes

the RAID Level, Stripe Size, Name and Capacity as below.

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RAID 1

1. RAID 1 requires exactly two physical drives, data duplicated

on another disk by mirroring, more disk space required. RAID 1
will reduce usable disk space to the size of the smallest drive and
reduced performance during rebuilds.

2. You can activate the function of load balance for RAID 1, it can
let the each drive averages the loading.

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3. The RAID list will display the RAID 1’ s information includes
the RAID Level, Load Balance, Name and Capacity as below.

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JBOD

1. Data just bunch one logical drive from two physical disks, pure
spanning.

2. The RAID list will display the RAID JBOD’ s information

includes the RAID Level, Name and Capacity as below.

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Initialize RAID

1. Perform the below steps to initialize a logical drive by using the

initialize selection, pay attention about the warning message that
all data in selected drive will be lost and continue the choices.

2. The initializing action will spend much time and the process of
initializing action will display how much percent is finished, you
also can press ESC key to leave the initializing action.

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Verify RAID

The verifying action will spend much time and the process of verifying
action will display how much percent is finished, you also can press
ESC key to leave the verifying action.

Delete RAID

Select the delete item from the RAID menu, and choose the name of
RAID which wants to delete as below.

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Rebuild

1. When the RAID 1 is broken, you can do the Rebuild function, but
you need the [ Reserved For RAID ] disk to rebuild, the below
image will prompt you to pay attention.

2. To pay attention about the warning message that all data will lost.

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3. The state will be changed from [Passthrough] to [ Reserve For
RAID ].

4. Rebuilding action will take a long time, so you can wait or press
ESC key to stop it.

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Change to Pass-through

Select the item of [ Change to Passthrough ] on the Disk menu for

change the hard disk to pass-through mode to leave the state of Raid
Member or Reserve for RAID.

Reserve for RAID

Select the item of [ Reserve For RAID ] on the Disk menu, and
change the hard disk from [ Passthrough ] to [ Reserve For RAID ]
for rebuilding function.

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Rescan

The Rescan function updates the status of RAID drive that will refresh
all of the attached devices and be showed the information on the
RAID List and Hard Disk List.

Exit BIOS Utility

You can select the Exit selection to leave the RAID BIOS Setup utility.

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RAID Explained
‹ RAID - Redundant Array of Independent Disks
RAID technology manages multiple disk drives to enhance I/O
performance and provide redundancy in order to withstand the failure
of any individual member, without loss of data. Medley provides three
RAID Set types, Striped (RAID 0), Mirrored (RAID 1)
‹ Disk Striping (RAID 0)
Striping is a performance-oriented, non-redundant data mapping
technique. While Striping is discussed as a RAID Set type, it is
actually does not provide fault tolerance. With modern ATA bus
mastering technology, multiple I/O operations can be done in parallel,
enhancing performance. Striping arrays use multiple disks to form a
larger virtual disk. This figure shows a stripe set using three disks
with stripe one written to disk one, stripe two to disk two, and so forth.

‹ Disk Mirroring (RAID 1)

Disk mirroring creates an identical twin for a selected disk by having
the data simultaneously written to two disks. This redundancy
provides instantaneous protection from a single disk failure. If a read
failure occurs on one drive, the system reads the data from the other
drive.

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