The Silicon Image SiI 3124 SoftRAID 5 Controller is a hardware controller that provides RAID functionality for systems using Serial ATA (SATA) drives. It is specifically designed for RAID 5, which is a data storage configuration that uses striping with parity. RAID 5 offers a good balance between performance and data redundancy, allowing for the distribution of data across multiple drives while providing fault tolerance in case of a single disk failure.
The Silicon Image SiI 3124 controller, when combined with SoftRAID 5, allows users to configure and manage RAID arrays, including RAID 0 (striping), RAID 1 (mirroring), and RAID 5 (striping with parity) on their system, primarily via software rather than hardware-based RAID acceleration.
The Windows driver is required for the operating system to recognize the controller and allow it to work with the drives connected through the RAID configuration.