Promise Technology FastTrak SX Series Version 4.4 - Manual (Page 63)

Chapter 5: RAID Monitoring and Maintenance
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Controller Cache
Allows you to toggle between two write modes for the FastTrak's cache:
Write Through – Data is written to the cache and hard drive at the same time.
This arrangement is safer. Check the box to select it
Write Back – Data is written to the cache first and to the hard drive later. This
arrangement increases performance at the risk of data loss if the power fails.
Uncheck the box to select it.
Disk Parameters
Check the respective boxes to enable these features:
Enable Write Cache – Speeds hard disk performance by writing data to the
cache to increase performance. Note that you can lose data if a power failure
occurs.
SMART Check – SMART, an acronym for Self-Monitoring Analysis and
Reporting Technology, is a feature of the disk drive software. It monitors the
internal performance of the drive and reports to the PC when it finds a potential
failure. SMART warns you of a developing drive failure so you can replace the
drive before it actually fails.
Rebuild Setting
Check the respective boxes to enable these features:
Enable Hot Spare Disk – Enables a spare drive not assigned to the array to
automatically replace a failed drive in the array. You must also enable Auto
Rebuild for this feature to be effective.
Enable Auto Rebuild – Enables automatic rebuilding of a fault-tolerant (RAID 1,
0+1 and 5) array when it goes Critical.
Enable Hot Swap Disk – Allows you to replace a faulty disk drive without
shutting down the system. This feature works with an externally replaceable disk
drive enclosure such as the Promise SuperSwap.
Rebuild Setting – Allocates system resources between rebuilding the array and
responding to read/write commands from the computer system.
A High setting assigns most of the system resources to rebuilding. Rebuilding
goes faster, restoring redundancy sooner but read/write requests are handled
slower.
A Low setting assigns most of the system resources to handling read/write
requests. Read/write requests are handled at nearly normal speed while the
rebuild takes longer.
See Rebuild an Array later in this chapter for more information on the rebuilding
process.