User manual

47
Chapter 5: RAID Concepts
• FastTrak Serial ATA RAID Controller Card, below
• Logical Disk Terms, page 48
• RAID Levels, page 51
FastTrak Serial ATA RAID Controller Card
FastTrak TX2200 and TX4200 Serial ATA RAID controller cards feature
concurrent data channel operation and onboard BIOS. The channels on the
FastTrak Controller support concurrent operation that allows for overlapped I/O
under multi-tasking operating systems and sharing the workload between
multiple drives.
Adapter BIOS
The FastTrak TX2200 and TX4200 cards contain a BIOS code that extends the
standard disk service routine provided through Int13. The BIOS is bootable for
DOS and other operating systems that rely on the system BIOS for drive
operation. When the FastTrak BIOS appears during bootup, press Ctrl-F to enter
the FastBuild setup to select from menu settings.
FastBuild Auto Menu Setup
This setup utility is used to build and manage FastTrak logical disks. The utility is
menu driven and features the Auto Setup (1) option that uses a simple,
interactive setup process. Once the logical disk is built, all the logical disk
members store the configuration information in the drive's reserved area. See
Chapter 3, which provides descriptions of individual functions.
Reserve Sector
Logical disk configuration data about the drive member and other members in the
logical disk are saved on a special location on the disk drives called the reserve
sector. If any member of the logical disk becomes corrupt or lost, the redundant
configuration data on the other members can be used for rebuilds.
Logical disk members do not have a memory of their drive positions. This allows
drives to be placed on different FastTrak connectors or FastTrak Controller cards
within the system without reconfiguring or rebuilding.