MicroNet Technology 5 Portable Media Storage User Manual


 
RAIDBank5 Owner’s Manual
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Write-back Cache a caching scheme that acknowledges the write request as complete before
data is written to the final storage location. This methodology can improve the efficiency
of write operations under favorable circumstances, but is at risk of data incoherencies in a
system that is not protected from power fluctuations or failures.
Write-through Cache When a cache is operating in write-through mode, data written into the
cache is also written to the destination secondary storage devices. Essentially write completion
does not occur until the data is written to secondary storage. Thus the contents of the cache
and the secondary storage are always consistent. The advantage is that the possibility of data
corruption is greatly reduced. The disadvantage is that write-through operations are more time
consuming
XOR Function All RAID arrays (with the exception of RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 10) require
parity to be calculated and written to the array in conjunction with data. Typically the parity is
a simple XOR on the bytes comprising a stripe. This is a computationally intensive operation
that many modern RAID controllers perform using a dedicated ASIC often referred to as a
XOR-engine.
C-Glossary