Hot spare drive, How fasttrak orders arrays, How fasttrak saves array information – Promise Technology 150TX2 User Manual
Page 37: Creating a hot spare drive for mirrored arrays, How fasttrak s150 tx2plus orders arrays, How fasttrak s150 tx2plus saves array information
Chapter 2: Getting Started
33
Creating a Hot Spare Drive for Mirrored Arrays
Caution
With some models of hard drives, if the Master hard drive fails, it
may cause the Slave hard drive to be unrecognized by the
computer's operating system. Where a RAID 1 (Mirroring) array
exists on the Master/Slave pair, this condition may cause the
operating system to freeze.
Do NOT create a RAID 1 (Mirroring) array with two Parallel ATA
hard drives using the Master/Slave arrangement on Channel 3
(the Parallel ATA port).
You can create a RAID 1 (Mirroring) array by combining hard
drives on:
•
Channels 1 and 2 (Serial ATA only)
•
Channels 1 and 3 (one Serial, one Parallel)
•
Channels 2 and 3 (one Serial, one Parallel)
For automatic rebuilds of a mirrored array, attach a spare drive to the FastTrak
S150 TX2plus. Drives that are not assigned to an array and are the same size or
larger than the original will be used for the automatic rebuild. This is performed
in the background under all supported operating systems, except DOS. At a
later time, the system can be turned off and the failed drive can be physically
removed.
How FastTrak S150 TX2plus Orders Arrays
During startup, the disk arrays on the FastTrak S150 TX2plus are recognized in
this order:
1. The array set to bootable in the FastBuild Setup.
2. The Array number (i.e. Array 0, Array 1…). This would be involved in
determining which drive letters will be assigned to each disk array.
How FastTrak S150 TX2plus Saves Array Information
All disk array data is saved into the reserved sector on each array member.
Promise suggests that users record their disk array information for future
reference.
Another feature of the FastTrak S150 TX2plus disk array system is to recognize
drive members even if drives are moved between different FastTrak S150
TX2plus card connectors. Since each drive’s array data identifies itself to the
array, it is possible to move or swap drives without modifying the array setup.
This is valuable when adding drives, or during a rebuild.