Promise Technology FastTrak TX4000 - Manual (Page 5)

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Chapter 1: Introduction
The PC which you are using either already contains a Promise Technology
FastTrak TX4000 RAID card installed by a third-party or you have acquired a
FastTrak TX4000 retail product for your existing PC and will be installing the
card yourself.
• For PC owners wishing to install their Promise Technology FastTrak
TX4000 card, proceed to Chapter 2: Quick Start on page 5.
• For PCs with a Promise Technology FastTrak TX4000 card already
installed, consult Chapter 6: Troubleshooting and Tips on page 51 if you are
experiencing any difficulties with the hard drive being recognized by the
card.
• If your operating system has crashed for some reason or you have
downloaded updated drivers from the Promise website (www.promise.com),
you may wish to reinstall software drivers for the FastTrak TX4000 card.
Consult Chapter 4: Installing Drivers on page 33.
What is the FastTrak TX4000 RAID Card?
Promise originally designed the FastTrak TX4000 card as a cost-effective, high
performance RAID card that adds performance and/or reliability to PC desktops
and/or servers using Ultra ATA/133, Ultra ATA/100, or Ultra ATA/66 drives. The
FastTrak TX4000 offer some major performance differences as described below.
The FastTrak TX4000 supports motherboards that offer a 66MHz PCI bus
(versus the traditional 33MHz bus) and the capability of transferring data across
the PCI bus at speeds up to 266MB per second (versus the previous 133MB per
second). As Ultra ATA/133 drive performance continues to improve, the use of
the Promise ATA RAID card in a 66 MHz PCI slot will allow data transfers to
exceed the older 33MB. Of course, the FastTrak TX4000 is backward
compatible with standard 33MHz PCI slots.
FastTrak TX4000 has four independent data channels to support a maximum of
four Ultra ATA drives. FastTrak TX4000 supports striping (RAID 0), mirroring
(RAID 1) or striping/mirroring (RAID 0+1).
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With striping, identical drives can read and write data in parallel to increase
performance.
• Mirroring increases read performance through load balancing and elevator
sorting while creating a complete backup of your files.
• Striping with mirroring offers both high read/write performance and fault
tolerance.
A FastTrak TX4000 striped array can double the sustained data transfer rate of
Ultra ATA/133 drives. FastTrak TX4000 fully supports Ultra ATA/133
specification of up to 133 MB/sec per drive, depending on individual drive
specifications.