User`s manual

25
Frequently Asked Questions
This section lists frequently asked questions involving pre-installation, drive issues, installation, and post-
installation.
Pre-Installation
(Speed, Device Types, Capacity, Cabling)
Q: What kind of hard drives can I use for a MBFastTrak133 Lite array?
A: You can
use any Ultra DMA IDE hard drive(s) to create arrays on the MBFastTrak133 Lite. You should
use matching drives for multiple-drive arrays to maximize capacity usage as well as performance. Ultra
ATA/133 drives are recommended for highest performance.
Q: Can I use ATAPI devices on the MBFastTrak133 Lite controller?
A: No. There is no driver layer on the MBFastTrak133 Lite controller which will support ATAPI packet
messages.
Q: Will the FastTrak133 Lite work with a 37Mhz or 41Mhz PCI bus speed?
A: The current PCI 2.2 specification is for a 33Mhz PCI bus speed. The MBFastTrak133 Lite is designed
around the specification. In most cases, a higher PCI bus speed will result in a variety of different errors.
While some people have been able to get these higher speeds to work, since it is out of specification we
cannot support it.
Q: How can I change the resources that the FastTrak uses?
A: The MBFastTrak133 Lite is fully PnP. This means all the resources that it uses are given to it by the
PnP BIOS on the motherboard. The MBFastTrak133 Lite does support IRQ sharing, but this will not
work unless ALL the concerned devices support the feature. If your motherboard allows you to control
the assignment of these resources, you may be able to remedy the problem by “playing around” with
them. You can also try resetting the configuration data in your CMOS. This is usually an option in the
PnP section of your CMOS.
Q: How does the MBFastTrak133 Lite RAID controller provide storage and/or data protection with
their arrays?
A: MBFastTrak133 Lite implements two different types of RAID levels as follows:
RAID 0 (stripe)
For capacity --
The MBFastTrak133 Lite array will be as big as the smallest HDD in the array times
however many HDDs are in the array. Any larger HDDs will simply be truncated. The truncated space
on the bigger HDDs will then be unusable.
For sustained data transfers --
Using MBFastTrak133 Lite, a RAID 0 array consisting of two HDDs will
transfer at about twice the speed of the slowest HDD in the array. A RAID 0 array consisting of four
HDDs will transfer at about three times the speed of the slowest HDD in the array.
RAID 1 (mirror)
For capacity --
The MBFastTrak133 Lite array will be as big as the smallest HDD in the array. The
larger HDD will simply be truncated. The truncated space on the bigger HDD will then be unusable.
For sustained data transfers --
The MBFastTrak133 Lite array will write data at the rate of the slowest
HDD in the array. The MBFastTrak133 Lite array will read data at twice the rate of the slowest HDD in
the array.