Installation manual

93 ATTO Technology Inc. ATTO Utilities Installation and Operation Manual
3.1 Configure Mode Pages: Alamode Utility
Alamode is a Windows utility to optimize disk drive performance by configuring mode pages without requiring
specific knowledge of mode page parameters.
A mode page or mode parameter page is a group of
related settings or parameters which govern certain
aspects of how a disk drive operates. Most drives
come from the factory set for maximum compatibility to
work safely and reliably with the widest range of hosts
and systems. However, these out-of-the-box settings
may disable some high-performance features which
your ATTO storage controller could use. Depending on
your requirements, mode pages can be configured to
affect performance, computability, data integrity and
other characteristics.
Alamode optimizes all mode pages at once. You do
not have to select which pages to optimize or which
parameters to optimize. Changing mode page settings
is quite safe. However you may change the drive’s
mode pages back to
Factory Defaults without losing
data.
Notes
• You cannot optimize IDE drives because they
don’t have mode pages.
• You cannot optimize drives which are striped in
a RAID group. You may optimize the drives
before striping them, or break up the group into
individual drives, optimize them, and then
rebuild the group. The second method,
however, destroys any data on the existing
RAID volume.
• If you plan on formatting the drive and setting its
mode pages, set the mode pages first using
Alamode.
Using Alamode
1 Launch the application.
2 Select the drive you want to optimize.
3 Click the button corresponding to the type of
application the drive uses:
• Digital Video
• Pre-press
• Default (return the drive to its factory default
settings)
You should shut down and restart the system
before continuing to use the drive to ensure the
drive behaves according to the new settings.
Exhibit 3.1-1 The Alamode page.