Adaptec ATA II 1420SA manual About the ARC Utility, About the AFU, Which Utility Should I Use?

Chapter 9: Managing Your Storage Space ● 38

About the ARC Utility

The Adaptec RAID Configuration (ARC) utility is a BIOS-based utility that you can use to create and manage controllers, disk drives and other devices, and arrays. The ARC utility comprises these tools:

●Array Configuration Utility (ACU)—For creating and managing arrays, and initializing and rescanning disk drives.

●SATASelect Utility—Used to change device and HostRAID controller settings.

●Disk Utilities—For formatting or verifying disk drives.

The ARC utility is included in your controller’s BIOS. For more information, see Using the ARC Utility on page 51.

Note: The ARC utility is primarily intended for pre-operating system installation configuration.

About the AFU

The Adaptec Flash Utility (AFU) is a text-based DOS utility that you can use to update, save, or verify your HostRAID controller’s firmware BIOS and Non-Volatile Random Access Memory (NVRAM).

!Caution: Although the AFU contains safeguards to prevent you from accidentally damaging your HostRAID controller’s flash contents, it is still important to use the AFU carefully and

correctly to avoid rendering your HostRAID controller inoperable. Adaptec recommends that only advanced users familiar with working in DOS use the AFU.

Which Utility Should I Use?

To create a bootable array, Adaptec recommends that you use the BIOS-based ARC utility (see above).

For all subsequent storage management tasks, Adaptec recommends that you install and use Adaptec Storage Manager (see page 37). As a full-featured software application with a graphical user interface (GUI), it is the easiest to use and offers the widest range of management functions.