5 Steps For an Easy RAID 1 Setup

3. Installing the module: After opening up the machine, the drive module is mounted into an available 3.5" drive bay. Since the module is the same size as a floppy drive, it fits easily inside the drive bay and can be secured tightly inside the machine.

Connect the SATA 22 power cable to the power supply and the SATA cable to the motherboard. The SATA connectors all have notches at one end to indicate which way to position the cables.

At this point, the machine can be closed back up.

Cost of the SATA 22 power cable: $6.30

4. Installing the drives: Remove the drive trays from their slots on the module and remove the safety support bracket inside each tray. The bracket is only used to support the tray when it leaves the factory. Once the drives are mounted, they are unnecessary.

Engineeres had two 200-Gbyte Deskstar 7K200 laptop hard disk drives from Hitachi. Each drive was mounted on to the drive trays. The screws that came in the accessory bag secured the drives into the tray.

Once the drives are mounted, insert the tray into the module. The drive's SATA connectors should plug directly into the connectors inside the slot with an audible click. The tray should be all the way inside, and when the slot is locked, the drive should not be sticking out or loose.

The top drive bay is HDD0 and considered the "source" under RAID 1. As long as there is a disk drive in the top slot, the SR2760 can work with just one drive.

Once both drives have been inserted, the machine can be powered on to finish setting up the RAID array.

Cost of the disk drives: $249 each, $498 total.

5. Detecting the drives: The computer's BIOS automatically detects the two drives inside the SR2760 as a single drive. The operating system, whether it's Linux, Microsoft Windows, or Macintosh, also detects the new drive as a single storage drive. The drives can be partitioned, initialized and formatted using the native tools within the operating system.

Engineers initialized and formatted the drives using the disk management tools in Windows XP.

Blue and red LEDs next to each drive provide a visual check to each drive's health status. If there is no drive in the slot or the drive fails, the lights alternate between red and blue. Healthy drives, whether they are rebuilding, initializing or being accessed, flash purple lights.

The SR2760 supports hot-swapping under RAID 1, so the dead drive can be replaced with a new one without powering down the machine. As soon as the new drive is in place, it will be initialized and the data mirror will be rebuilt automatically.

Final thoughts: The system is up and ready to go with a fully configured hardware RAID 1 solution. Engineers had a working 200-Gbyte data mirror in less than 30 minutes.