Promise Technology EX8654, EX8658, EX8650, EX4650 manual Installation Issues Capacity, Booting

Chapter 9: Support

I already have an array on a Promise FastTrak controller. Can I move that array to my new SuperTrak EX Series controller?

No. The SuperTrak EX Series controller supports SNIA Disk Data Format (DDF), which is not backward compatible with the FastTrak controller.

If I have a problem with one of the drives on the SuperTrak EX Series, how can I low-level format it to correct the problem?

Do NOT do this! Low-level formatting hard physical drives is not only unnecessary but it generally does not correct problems commonly experienced during use.

Errors such as bad sectors or ECC/CRC failure are best remedied by completely replacing the drive. For this reason, do NOT low-level format the drives attached to the SuperTrak EX Series controller.

Do I have to install disk management software on my logical drive in order to access the full storage capacity of drives?

No! Disk management software will only complicate things. The logical drive should be fully addressable by your OS as it is. Some operating systems have limits on the sizes of partitions and logical drives that can be defined. Consult your OS documentation about partitioning larger drives.

What system BIOS setup settings do I use for the drives on the SuperTrak EX Series?

A BIOS setting is required only if you want to boot your system from the logical drive on the SuperTrak EX Series controller. After your logical drive is created, partitioned and formatted, make the change in your BIOS boot order setting.

How do I partition/format my SuperTrak EX Series RAID logical drive?

The SuperTrak EX Series controller represents the logical drive as a single physical drive to your system. Therefore, anything that you can do to a single physical drive you can do to a SuperTrak logical drive.

For example, you should use the FDISK and FORMAT utilities to partition and format the logical drive. You can format the logical drive with any file system you wish.

Installation Issues (Capacity, Booting)

How can I change the system boot sequence in order to boot from the SuperTrak EX Series logical drive?

The boot sequence is controlled by the system BIOS. As far as the system BIOS is concerned, the SuperTrak EX Controller and defined logical drives

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