PCI-to-IDE ATA-133 RAID Controller AEC-6885 User’s Manual Version:1.0 Copyright © 2002 ACARD Technology Corp.
Copyright and Trademarks The information of the product in this manual is subject to change without prior notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of the vendor, who assumes no liability or responsibility for any errors that may appear in this manual. ACARD and SCSIDE are the trademarks of ACARD Technology Corp. Microsoft and the Windows Logo are the registered trademarks, and Windows is the trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
Table of Contents Chapter 1 Introduction ....................................... 5 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Overview ................................................................ Features ................................................................. Specifications ........................................................ Package.................................................................. 5 5 5 6 Chapter 2 Hardware Installation........................ 7 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Quick Installation .............
.3 In Win 9X/ME........................................................ 22 4.3.1 Install the Driver ............................................................ 22 4.3.2 Boot from AEC-6885 ..................................................... 22 4.4 In Linux ................................................................ 22 Chapter 5 The AEC-6885 Utility ....................... 24 5.1 Install the Utility .................................................. 24 5.2 Operate the Utility ......................
AEC-6885 User’s Manual Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Overview ACARD AEC-6885 is a PCI 64-bit, 4-channel, high-performance PCI PnP ATA 133 RAID card. It supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1, JBOD as well as Hot Swap, and is fit for servers and high-class workstations. 1.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual 1.4 Package When you open the package, please examine the following items.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual Chapter 2 Hardware Installation 2.1 Quick Installation Please follow the 7 steps to install AEC-6885 at once. (1). Be sure that the system power has been off. (2). Open the housing of PC. (3). Insert AEC-6885 into an available PCI slot firmly. (4). Screw AEC-6885 onto the housing. (5). Connect AEC-6885 to the hard drives with an ATA 133 cable. (6). Connect a 4-pin power cord to the hard drives. (7). Screw the housing and power on the system. 2.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual 2.3 Connection of Cable and Power Cord Basically speaking, it is easy for any user to connect the ATA 133 cable and the 4pin power cord, because they are foolproof. The methods are given below. (1). Find out a color line of the ATA 133 cable indicating pin 1 of the connector. (2). Find out pin 1 of the IDE connector on the IDE hard drive. (see HDD’s manual) (3). Connect the ATA 133 cable to the IDE hard drive by pin 1 to pin 1. (4). Connect the 4-pin power cord to the IDE hard drive.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual 2.4 Compatibility AEC-6885 is particularly designed for DMA hard drive, and has been fully tested with the hard drives available in laboratory. AEC-6885 supports various ATA 66/ 100/133 hard drives as listed below. C C C C C C Quantum Seagate IBM Maxtor Fujitsu Western Digital For the newest compatibility, please visit http://www.acard.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual Chapter 3 BIOS Setup After installing AEC-6885 and booting the system, you will see the following figure appear immediately behind the figure of motherboard. The figure indicates your BIOS version, hard drive information, RAID status, etc. Figure 3-1 NOTICE: If a hard drive has been set as boot disk, there will be a * appearing before its model number. Please press Ctrl + or simultaneously to enter BIOS Setup Utility.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual 3.1 Description of Functions On BIOS screen use <á>,<â> to change items, press to select and confirm, and press to cancel or exit (return to previous screen). Meanwhile at the bottom of the screen, you can see the model numbers of hard drives connected to the channels, the capacity, the RAID status and class. For example, U5 represents an Ultra 5 ATA100 hard drive. 3.1.1 Set RAID Modes There are 8 arrays built in AEC-6885.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual 3.1.2 Build Mirror Disk When changing a mirrored hard drive, you can rebuild the hard drive’s data by “Build Mirror Disk” according to the prompt upon booting. Please see 3.2.2. NOTICE: The rebuilding time depends on the size of RAID. You can press Ctrl + S to stop rebuilding. 3.1.3 Quick Erase Disk This function allows you to quickly erase the data on a selected hard drive. Beware that the data and the partitions will be completely erased. 3.1.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual Select any array in “Set RAID Modes”, then press to select a RAID mode. After selection, the screen will prompt “Please select disks to create array”, and the cursor will move to the display area of hard drive at the bottom of the screen. Use <á>,<â> to select hard drives. Green highlighted items can be selected but purple ones cannot. After selecting the hard drive, press to return to the dialog box of “Set RAID Modes” and continue.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual Figure 3-5 3.2.2 Mirror Mode This mode needs a pair of hard drives for each array. If the two hard drives you have chosen contain the same data, or different data that you don’t want to keep, you can select “Create Only”. But if not, please choose one of them as the source hard drive (label is disk0 or disk1), and copy the data from the source one to another.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual Figure 3-7 3.2.3 Stripe + Mirror Mode This mode needs four hard drives. You can connect four hard drives to four channels that are all set as Master or Slave. Besides, you have to select stripe block size, too. 3.2.4 JBOD Mode This mode means to add all selected hard drives and make them become a big one.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual Chapter 4 System & Driver Installation Driver installation varies somewhat in different operating systems. You can install the driver of AEC-6885 in an existing OS, or install a new OS to the hard drives connected to AEC-6885. The second method can be said to boot from AEC-6885. 4.1 In Win 2000/XP Here we only take Windows XP as an example to explain. 4.1.1 Install the Driver Please follow the steps given below to install the driver of AEC-6885. (1).
AEC-6885 User’s Manual (3). Follow the wizard. Windows XP will require the driver’s location. Select “Include this location in the search”. (4). Select “Browse” to find the driver’s directory of AEC6885.inf such as A:\WinXP. Figure 4-2 (5). After the wizard finds the driver, click “Next” to install it.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual (6). Click “Continue Anyway” to continue the installation. Figure 4-4 (7). Follow the directions. The system will complete the setup automatically.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual (8). After setup, please boot the system again, and click “My Computer”. Figure 4-6 (9). Find “View system information”, and double click it.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual (10). In “System Properties” click “Hardware” and then “Device Manager”. Figure 4-8 (11). Under “SCSI and RAID Controllers” double click “ACARD AEC-6885 PCI Ultra ATA 133 RAID Controller” to see if the card has been installed successfully.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual NOTICE: During driver installation, if you encounter the problem of Windows logo, please click “Continue Anyway”. Windows logo is a mechanism designed to prevent OS from working abnormally because of installing unidentified software. Yet, the driver of AEC-6885 is proven not to affect the entire work of OS. 4.1.2 Boot from AEC-6885 Please follow the steps given below to install a new OS to the hard drives connected to AEC-6885. Thus you can boot from AEC-6885. (1).
AEC-6885 User’s Manual (3) Follow the wizard to complete. After execution, boot the system again. 4.2.2 Boot from AEC-6885 Please refer to 4.1.2. 4.3 In Win 9X/ME 4.3.1 Install the Driver (1). The procedures are similar to those in 4.1.1. Follow the wizard to complete. (2). After installation, boot the system again. Then click “My Computer”, “Control Panel”, “System”, “Device Manager”, and “SCSI or RAID Controllers”. If you can find AEC-6885, that means successful installation. 4.3.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual Linux Driver”. (1). Install a new system into the hard drives connected to AEC-6885: a. Boot the system with Linux installation CD. b. On the first installation screen, you will see a prompt “boot:” at the bottom of the screen. Please type [linux dd] to install Linux to a specific device. c. Press “Yes”. We have drivers for Linux at the “Devices” dialog box. d. Inser the AEC-6885 driver disk into the floppy drive, and click “OK” to continue. e.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual Chapter 5 The AEC-6885 Utility ACARD has designed a program called AEC-6885 Utility for you to use the IDE card effectively. The utility will execute automatically after installation, setting and booting anew. 5.1 Install the Utility Please follow the three steps to install the utility. (1). Place the CD containing the driver of AEC-6885 into CD-ROM. (2). Click “Utility install”, “IDE RAID Utility”, and “AEC-6885 Utility”. (3). Follow the wizard to complete. Figure 5-1 5.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual Figure 5-2 5.2.1 File Click “File” to find “Exit”. It is used to leave the utility. But if you don’t like to end the program, you can click < -- > on the upper right of the window to minimize it. 5.2.2 Action Click “Action” to find “Rescan Bus”. It is used to refresh the screen; that is, to display anew the status of all RAIDs. 5.2.3 Option Click “Option” to find “Preference” and “Mail Notification Setup”.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual 5.2.5 System Info Click “System Info” to find the information and status of your RAID and hard drives. 5.2.6 Event Log Click “Event Log” to find all important things about RAID such as the damage, removal, and adding of hard drives. However, in the beginning there is no record. 5.2.7 Array Management Click “Array Management” to find a more user-friendly interface than BIOS. Via the interface you can set or change your RAID easily.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual Chapter 6 Troubleshooting After installing AEC-6885, if it cannot work normally, please follow the checklist given below to solve the problems. (1). Inspect if the power cord’s connectors are loose, or if the watt of power supply is not sufficient. (2). Inspect if the jumper settings on the hard drives are all Master or Slave. (3). Inspect if AEC-6885 is firmly inserted into the PCI slot. (4). Inspect if the connectors of ATA 133 cable are loose or damaged.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual Appendix A About RAID RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is a system composed of many hard drives; that is, a pair of hard drives or more unite into a whole drive or an array. For the system only one hard drive is revealed. The advantages of RAID technology are increasing the read/write speed of a hard drive, achieving better data protection, and enlarging the capacity of a single drive like Drive C, Drive D, etc.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual It is suggested to compose RAID 1 with hard drives of the same capacity. Because the capacity of mirrored disk array is that of the smallest hard drive. For example, a 100GB hard drive and a 120GB one unite into RAID 1. The capacity is 100GB. A-3 RAID 0+1 (Striping/Mirroring) RAID 0+1 is the combination of striping and mirroring. It has the advantages of two RAID classes.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual Appendix B Make An Installation Disk For installing an OS like Windows 2000/NT/XP into a hard drive with ACARD adapter, you need a floppy disk containing the adapter’s driver to boot the hard drive. Please follow the steps below to make an ACARD adapter’s driver disk. 1. Insert ACARD Support CD into CD-ROM. 2. Click “Explore This CD” and then get the CD file window.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual 3. Under the “Driver” folder find your adapter’s model number. For example, AEC6880’s driver is Driver>IDE>AEC6880V1.3.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual 4. Choose the driver folder, and right-click “Send to 3.5” floppy”. Meanwhile insert an empty disk into floppy drive. 5. Now use the driver disk to boot the hard drive and install the OS.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual Appendix C ASPITool32 Manager The ASPITool32 Manager program has many functions aimed at making the hard drives work properly under the Windows OS while they are connected with the ACARD SCSI or IDE adapter. The ASPITool32 Manager program is proudly developed by ACARD. You may get the setup program from the ACARD Driver CD. ASPITool32 Manager Functions 1.FDsik: Create a partition on the hard drive. 2.Disk QErase: Quickly erase the contents of the hard drive.
AEC-6885 User’s Manual Technical Support Form Email: support@acard.com http://www.acard.
