Areca ARC-1130 User Manual

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A RAID set is a group of disks connected to a RAID controller. A 

RAID set contains one or more volume sets. The RAID set itself 

does not define the RAID level (0, 1, 1E, 3, 5, 6, etc); the RAID 

level is defined within each volume set. Therefore, volume sets are 

contained within RAID sets and RAID Level is defined within the 

volume set. If physical disks of different capacities are grouped 

together in a RAID set, then the capacity of the smallest disk will 

become the effective capacity of all the disks in the RAID set.

Each volume set is seen by the host system as a single logical de-

vice (in other words, a single large virtual hard disk). A volume set 

will use a specific RAID level, which will require one or more physi-

cal disks (depending on the RAID level used). RAID level refers to 

the level of performance and data protection of a volume set. The 

capacity of a volume set can consume all or a portion of the avail-

able disk capacity in a RAID set. Multiple volume sets can exist in a 

RAID set. 

For the SATA RAID controller, a volume set must be created either 

on an existing RAID set or on a group of available individual disks 

(disks that are about to become part of a RAID set). If there are 

pre-existing RAID sets with available capacity and enough disks for 

the desired RAID level, then the volume set can be created in the 

existing RAID set of the user’s choice. 

 Internal PCI-Express RAID Card Comparison (ARC-12XX)

1231ML

1261ML

1280ML

1280

RAID processor

IOP341

Host Bus Type

PCI-Express X8

RAID 6 support

YES

YES

YES

YES

Cache Memory

One DDR2 DIMM (Default 256MB, Upgrade to 2GB)

Drive Support

12 * SATA ll

16 * SATA ll

24 * SATA ll

24 * SATA ll

Disk Connector

3*Min SAS 4i

4*Min SAS 4i

6*Min SAS 4i

24*SATA