A. Use Disk Management
To start Disk Management:
a. Log on as administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.
b. Click Start, click Run, type compmgmt.msc, and then click OK.
c. In the console tree, click Disk Management.

The Disk Management window appears. Your disks and volumes appear in a graphical view and list view. To customize how you view your disks and volumes in the upper and lower panes of the window, point to Top or Bottom on the View menu, and then click the view that you want to use.

B. Create a new partition or a new logical drive
To create a new partition or logical drive on a basic disk:
1. In the Disk Management window, complete one of the following procedures, and then
continue to step 2 :      
- To create a new partition, right-click unallocated space on the basic disk where you want to create the partition, and then click New Partition.
- To create a new logical drive in an extended partition, right-click free space on an extended partition where you want to create the logical drive, and then click New Logical Drive.

C. In the New Partition Wizard, click Next.

D. Click the type of partition that you want to create (pick from one of the option :
Primary partition, Extended partition, or Logical drive), and then click Next.

E. Specify the size of the partition in the Partition size of the MB box and then click “Next”.

F. To decide whether to manually assign a drive letter, let the system automatically enumerate the drive, or do not assign a drive letter to the new partition or logical drive, and then click Next.

G. Specify the formatting options you want to use by using one of the following procedures :
- If you do not want to format the partition, click Do not format this partition, and then click Next.
- If you want to format the partition, click Format this partition with the following settings, and then complete the following procedure in the Format dialog box:
- Type a name for the volume in the Volume label box. This is an optional step.
- Click the file system that you want to use in the File system box. - You can change the disk allocation unit size, and then specify whether to perform a quick format, or enable file and folder compression on NTFS volumes.
- Click Next.

H. Confirm that the options that selected are correct, and then click Finish.
The new partition or logical drive is created and appears in the appropriate basic disk in the Disk Management window. If you chose to format the volume in step 6, the format process now starts.

How do I format a basic volume?

To format a partition, logical drive or basic volume :
1. In the Disk Management window, right-click the partition or logical drive that you want to format (or reformat), and then click Format.
2. In the Format dialog box, type a name for the volume in the Volume label box. This is an optional step.
3. Click the file system that you want to use in the File system box. If you want, you can also change the disk allocation unit size, specify whether you want to perform a quick format, or enable file and folder compression on NTFS volumes.
4. Click OK.
5. Click OK when you are prompted to format the volume. The format process starts


How do I upgrade the firmware of the LionRAID Model: LR2TUE?

1. Connect the LR2TUE to your PC using the serial cable then power on the LR2TUE
2. Open the RAIDGuide Manager program
3. In the RAIDGuide Manager Program, Select RAID --> Connect --> RAID System 1
4. In the popup window, RS-232 Setup, select the COM port which you are using to connect with the LR2TUE and then Click OK
5. The utility will detect if there is any unit connected to the PC. Once the unit is found, a window of RAID System 1 will be displayed.
6. Choose Advanced --> RAID System 1 Setting
7. A Password window will be displayed, type in the password for the unit; (the default password is 0000).
8. After inputting the password, the RAID System 1 Setting window will be shown.
9. Choose the right most tab, RS-232 UPGRADE, a firmware update confirmation window will be displayed. Choose OK.
10. Click Open Files select the firmware data file and click OPEN
11. Click the RUN button. This will start to program LR2TUE with the latest firmware. NOTE: DO NOT POWER OFF THE UNIT, OR IT WILL DAMAGE THE UNIT
12. After the upgrade is complete, a warning message will be displayed to ask if you want to restart your system.
13. Click OK, Windows will automatically restart. At the same time, please restart the LR2TUE in order to load the unit with the latest firmware.


What is "JBOD"?

JBOD stands for Just Bunch Of Disks. A group of disks configured in an enclosure that are not configured as a RAID for fault-tolerance. There is no redundancy of the hard drives (No-RAID) and there are just bunch of disks in the enclosure. The simplicity of JBOD makes it a good choice to increase the capacity of the system easily and economically.


What is "RAID"?

RAID stands for "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks". The concept of RAID originated from a paper ("A case for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks" - 1987) published from the University of California at Berkley, proposing that using multiple small and rather inexpensive disks to replace the use of a single large disk to achieve fault-tolerant data redundancy. Another term "Parity Data" was often mentioned together with RAID. The parity data or disk is used to reconstruct data to a failed drive by comparing the data for the remaining drives in the array.


What are RAID levels?

Originally five RAID configurations, levels 1 through 6, were defined. A newer version, "data striping", or level 0, offers some performance advantages over other RAID levels but no data redundancy, so technically it isn't actually RAID. The most popular RAID levels are 0, 1, 3, 5 and 6, their definition of RAID levels are:

RAID 0
Known as disk striping. High Performance but no protection. It combines disks into one RAID that are used to improve some performance, but there is no logic to protect/recover data. *Synchronized disks are used.

RAID 1
This is known as mirroring. Data is written to two different disks at the same time, and data can be read from either disk. This helps to protect the data. If one disk is defective, the unit can still read the data from the other disk.

RAID 3
Striping data over several disks. Provides performance and protection. One of the disks will be used as parity. Parity interleaves at byte level and is stored in a dedicated disk. *Synchronized disks are required.

RAID 5
Striping data and parity over several disks with no dedicated disk for parity.

RAID 6
For each data stripe, there are 2 different and separate parity bits stored on 2 different disks among the RAID array members. There are 2 separate hardware XOR engines to generate the 2 parity bits. There are 2 major reasons justifying the need for RAID-6. * Synchronized disks - Multiple disks are being used to write a single file. This is a function of the disk controller.