Promise Technology FAST TRAK100TM - Manual (Page 69)

FastTrak100 User Manual
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Understanding Disk Array Concepts
About FastTrak100 Disk Array Adapter
FastTrak100 is a high performance Ultra ATA/EIDE RAID controller card that
features parallel data channel operation and an onboard BIOS. The two channels
on the FastTrak100 support parallel operation that allows for overlapped I/O under
multi-tasking operating systems and sharing the workload between multiple drives.
About Adapter BIOS
The FastTrak100 card contains a BIOS code that extends the standard disk
service routine provided through Int13h. The BIOS is bootable for DOS and other
operating systems that rely on the system BIOS for drive operation. FastTrak100
can support drives and disk arrays with capacities exceeding 8.4 GB using
Extended Interrupt13 support. When the FastTrak100 BIOS appears during bootup,
users can press to enter the FastBuild
TM setup to select from menu
settings.
FastBuild ™ Auto Menu Setup
This setup utility is used to build and manage FastTrak100 disk arrays. The utility
is menu driven and features the <1> Auto Setup option that uses a simple,
interactive setup process. Once the array is built, all the array members store the
configuration information in the drive’s reserved area. See Chapter 4 that provides
descriptions of individual functions.
Reserved Sector
Array configuration data about the drive member and other members in the disk
array are saved on a special location on the disk drives called the reserved sector.
If any member of the array becomes corrupt or lost, the redundant configuration
data on the other members can be used for rebuilds.
Disk array members do not have a “memory” of their drive positions. This allows
drives to be placed on different FastTrak100 connectors within the system without
reconfiguring or rebuilding.