® TX/LP Series Ultra ATA/100 RAID Cards User's Manual Copyright Copyright by Promise Technology, Inc. ("Promise"), 2001. No part of this manual may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the expressed, written permission of Promise. Trademarks All trademarks are the property of their respective holders. Important data protection information You should back up all data before installing any drive controller or storage peripheral. Promise is not responsible for any loss of data resulting from the use, disuse or misuse of this or any other Promise product. Notice Although Promise has attempted to ensure the accuracy of the content of this manual, it is possible that this document may contain technical inaccuracies, typographical, or other errors. Promise Technology, Inc. assumes no liability for any error in this publication, and for damages, whether direct, indirect, incidental, consequential or otherwise, that may result from such error, including, but not limited to loss of data or profits. Promise provides this publication "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including, but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. The published information in the manual is subject to change without notice. Promise reserves the right to make changes in the product design, layout, and driver revisions without notification to its users. FastTrak100 TX/LPTM Series User Manual Table of Contents INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................................1 WHAT IS THE FASTTRAK100 TX/LP SERIES RAID CARD?............................................1 KEYS FEATURES AND BENEFITS .................................................................................3 QUICK START ...............................................................................................................5 UNPACKING YOUR FASTTRAK100...............................................................................5 INSTALLING THE CARD ................................................................................................6 INSTALLING THE HARD DRIVES ...................................................................................7 CHECKING CMOS SETTINGS.......................................................................................9 CREATING YOUR DISK ARRAY .................................................................................10 USING FASTBUILDTM CONFIGURATION UTILITY......................................................14 VIEWING FASTTRAK100 BIOS SCREEN ....................................................................14 NAVIGATING THE FASTBUILD TM S ETUP MENU ...........................................................15 CREATING ARRAYS AUTOMATICALLY .......................................................................16 VIEWING DRIVE ASSIGNMENTS ................................................................................18 MANUALLY CREATING AN ARRAY .............................................................................19 DELETING AN ARRAY ...............................................................................................26 REBUILDING A MIRRORED ARRAY ...........................................................................27 VIEWING CONTROLLER SETTINGS ............................................................................29 INSTALLING DRIVERS ................................................................................................30 WINDOWS 2000........................................................................................................30 WINDOWS NT4 .........................................................................................................32 WINDOWS ME...........................................................................................................34 WINDOWS 95/98.......................................................................................................36 DOS/WINDOWS 3.1X.................................................................................................39 NETWARE 3.12..........................................................................................................40 NETWARE 4.11..........................................................................................................42 NETWARE 5...............................................................................................................44 NETWARE ERROR AND INFORMATIONAL MESSAGES..................................................45 LINUX........................................................................................................................46 USING THE FASTCHECKTM MONITORING UTILITY...................................................47 INSTALLING FASTCHECK............................................................................................47 RUNNING FASTCHECK ..............................................................................................48 CLOSING FASTCHECK ...............................................................................................48 USING FASTCHECK ARRAY WINDOW .......................................................................49 SYNCHRONIZING AN ARRAY ...................................................................................53 REBUILDING AN ARRAY ...........................................................................................55 USING CONTROLLER WINDOW ..................................................................................58 USING OPTIONS WINDOW .........................................................................................62 FastTrak100 TX/LPTM Series User Manual UNDERSTANDING DISK ARRAY CONCEPTS.............................................................70 ABOUT FASTTRAK100 TX/LP SERIES DISK ARRAY ADAPTER ...................................70 ABOUT ADAPTER BIOS.............................................................................................70 FASTBUILD TM AUTO MENU SETUP.............................................................................70 RESERVED SECTOR ..................................................................................................70 DISK ARRAY TERMS .................................................................................................71 ABOUT RAID LEVELS ................................................................................................72 TROUBLESHOOTING & TIPS......................................................................................76 MOTHERBOARD ISSUES.............................................................................................76 SYSTEM CMOS ISSUES .............................................................................................77 DRIVE-RELATED ERRORS..........................................................................................77 OPERATING SYSTEM-RELATED ISSUES......................................................................81 PERFORMANCE TIPS .................................................................................................83 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS .............................................................................86 PRE-INSTALLATION ....................................................................................................86 DRIVE ISSUES ...........................................................................................................88 INSTALLATION ISSUES................................................................................................89 POST-INSTALLATION ..................................................................................................89 CONTACTING PROMISE SUPPORT .........................................................................A-1 LIMITED WARRANTY................................................................................................B-1 RETURNING PRODUCT FOR REPAIR........................................................................C-1 FastTrak100 TX/LPTM Series User Manual Introduction The PC which you are using either already c ontains a Promise Technology ® FastTrak100 TX4, TX2, or LP RAID card installed by a third-party or you have acquired a FastTrak100 retail product for your existing PC and will be installing the card yourself. For PC owners wishing to install their Promise Technology ® FastTrak100 TX4/TX2/LP card, proceed to the Quick Start section (see page 5). For PCs with a Promise Technology ® FastTrak100 TX4/TX2/LP card already installed, consult the Troubleshooting section of the manual (see page 76) 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.promi se.com), you may wish to reinstall software drivers for the FastTrak100 card. Use the Installing Drivers section (see page 30). In order to serve you better and provide information updates, please take a moment to register your controller at http://www.promise.com/warranty . What is the FastTrak100 TX/LP Series RAID Card? Promise originally designed the FastTrak100 card as a cost-effective, high performance RAID card that adds performance and/or reliability to PC desktops and/or servers using Ultra ATA/100, Ultra ATA/66, or EIDE drives. The FastTrak100 TX/LP Series models offer some major performance differences as described below. The FastTrak100 TX/LP Series models all support newer 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/100 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 133MB. Of course, the FastTrak100 TX/LP series cards are backward compatible with standard 33MHz PCI slots. The FastTrak100 TX4 model offers four independent data channels to support a maximum of four Ultra ATA drives. This multiplies the sustained data transfer rate of attached drives that are striped together under RAID 0 or RAID 0+1 (up to 200MB per second). The FastTrak100 TX2 offers two independent data channels to support a maximum of four Ultra ATA drives -- though Promise recommends using just one drive per channel for maximum performance. The FastTrak100 LP offers the same features as the TX2 but in a low profile form factor designed for low profile PCs. FastTrak100 supports striping (RAID 0), mirroring (RAID 1), striping/mirroring (RAID 0+1), or spanning (JBOD) operation, respectively. With striping, identical drives can read and write data in parallel to increase performance. Mirroring increases read 1 FastTrak100 TX/LPTM Series User Manual 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. Spanning uses the full capacity of all attached drives without requiring identical drive size, but offers no other RAID functionality. A FastTrak100 striped array can double (TX2 and LP models using two drives) or quadruple (TX4 model using four drives) the sustained data transfer rate of Ultra ATA/100 drives. FastTrak100 fully supports Ultra ATA/100 specification of up to 100 MB/sec per drive, depending on individual drive specifications. All FastTrak100 models also offer fault tolerant, data redundancy for entry-level network file servers or simply for desktop PC users wanting to continually protect valuable data on their PC. Each FastTrak100 model offers RAID 1 mirroring (for two drives) and RAID 0+1 mirroring plus striping (for four drives) to protect data. Should a drive that is part of a mirrored array fail, FastTrak100 uses the mirrored drive (which contains identical data) to assume all data handling. When a new replacement drive is later installed, FastTrak100 rebuilds data to the new drive from the mirrored drive to restore fault tolerance. When attached drives are used with optional Promise SuperSwap(tm) "hot" swap chassises, the FastTrak100 models allow replacing a failed drive without shutting down the PC operation under RAID 1 mirroring. Because of its four independent data channels, the FastTrak100 TX4 also supports "hot" swapping under RAID 0+1 using four drives. FastTrak100's bootable BIOS supports individual drives larger than 8.4GB. With FAT32 and NTFS partitioning, the array can be addressed as one large single volume. 2 FastTrak100 TX/LPTM Series User Manual Keys Features and Benefits The following information offers an overview of the major features of your new Promise FastTrak100 TX4, TX2 or LP card. The table is divided into two areas: Advanced Hardware Design, and Compatibility. Advanced ...