User manual

FastTrak SX4300, SX8300 User Manual

Spare Drives are automatically added to an array once a disk member of the

array has been detected as failed. To restore fault tolerance as quickly as

possible, the FastTrak Controller performs an automatic data rebuild on the

spare drive in the background without the need to restart the system. At a later

time, the failed drive can be physically removed and a new drive added in its

place to function as the spare drive.

Cache Settings

Sets the FastTrak controller’s cache mode for each logical drive. The choices are

WriteBack and WriteThru (write through). A write-back cache holds data after

an I/O operation and tells the controller the data has been written. The data is

written as soon as the disk drive is no longer busy.

This action increases availability of the logical drive. If the power fails before the

data is written to the disk drive, the data will be lost.

The alternative is a write-through cache policy, which reports that the data has

been written to the disk only when it actually has.

Logical Drive Expansion

To expand a logical drive is to increase the number of disk drives.

The FastTrak SX4300 and SX8300 RAID Controller cards support logical drive

expansion. However, you must use the WebPAM software to access this function.

WebPAM ships with the FastTrak SX Series card on the software CD.

Expansion takes place on an existing Functional logical drive without disturbing

the existing data. While the logical drive is expanding, you can access the data as

before. When expasion is complete, your logical drive will have a larger capacity.

See the table below.