Promise Technology 150TX2 Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 1: Introduction

Thank you for purchasing Promise Technology’s FastTrak S150 TX2plus RAID

controller card. The PC which you are using either already contains FastTrak

S150 TX2plus installed by a third-party or you have acquired a FastTrak S150

TX2plus retail product for your existing PC and plan to install the card yourself.

• For PC owners wishing to install their FastTrak S150 TX2plus RAID

controller card, go to Chapter 2: Installation on page 5.

• For PCs with a FastTrak S150 TX2plus RAID controller card already

installed, and you are experiencing any difficulties with the hard drive being

recognized by the card go to the Chapter 6: Troubleshooting on page 51.

• 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 S150 TX2plus

RAID controller card. See Chapter 4: Installing Drivers on page 33.

Promise originally designed the FastTrak S150 TX2plus as a cost-effective, high

performance RAID controller card that adds performance and/or reliability to PC

desktops and/or servers using Serial ATA drives.

FastTrak S150 TX2plus has three independent data channels to support a

maximum of two Serial ATA drives and two Ultra ATA/133 drives. FastTrak S150

TX2plus supports:

• Striping (RAID 0) – Identical drives can read and write data in parallel to

increase performance.

• Mirroring (RAID 1) – Mirroring increases read performance through load

balancing and elevator sorting while creating a complete backup of your

files.

• Striping / Mirroring (RAID 0+1) – Combining striping with mirroring offers

both high read/write performance and fault tolerance

A FastTrak S150 TX2plus striped array can double the sustained data transfer

rate of Serial ATA drives.

FastTrak S150 TX2plus offers 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 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, FastTrak S150 TX2plus uses

the mirrored drive (which contains identical data) to assume all data handling.

When a new replacement drive is later installed, FastTrak S150 TX2plus

rebuilds data to the new drive from the mirrored drive to restore fault tolerance.