Systems and methods for preventing fraud during retail checkout are described. A mask blank for electron beam lithography is manufactured as an intermediary product by etching a silicon base layer and a BOX layer subsequent to forming a protective layer on a front side of an SOI layer simultaneously with forming a hard mask on a back side of the SOI layer. Various parameters of the system can be monitored, and the system can be reconfigured automatically based on the observations. Since it is necessary to be conscious of difference in reliability and performance among disk devices when forming a RAID, a drive kind notification unit, which is a program for notifying of the kind of a disk device when forming the RAID, is provided.