Promise Technology FastTrak S150 - Manual (Page 49)

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Chapter 5: Disk Array Concepts
About FastTrak S150 TX4
FastTrak S150 TX4 is a high performance Serial ATA/Ultra ATA RAID controller
card that features concurrent data channel operation and onboard BIOS. The
channels on the FastTrak S150 TX4 support concurrent operation that allows for
overlapped I/O under multi-tasking operating systems and sharing the workload
between multiple drives.
About Adapter BIOS
The FastTrak S150 TX4 card contains 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 S150 TX4 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 S150 TX4 disk arrays.
The utility is menu driven and features the Auto Setup (1) 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 3,
which provides descriptions of individual functions.
Reserve 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 reserve 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 FastTrak S150 TX4 connectors or cards within
the system without reconfiguring or rebuilding.