FastTrak TX Series User Manual

FastTrak TX2200, TX2300 User Manual
2
Overview
The PC which you are using either already contains FastTrak TX2200 or TX2300
RAID Controller card installed by a third-party or you have acquired a FastTrak
TX2200 or TX2300 retail product for your existing PC and plan to install the card
yourself.
• For PC owners wishing to install their TX2200 or TX2300 RAID Controller
card, go to Chapter 2: Installation on page 5.
• For PCs with a FastTrak TX2200 or TX2300 RAID Controller card already
installed, and you are experiencing any difficulties with the disk drives being
recognized by the card, go to 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 TX2200 or
TX2300 RAID controller card. See Chapter 4: Installing Drivers on page 33.
FastTrak TX Series
Promise originally designed the FastTrak TX2200 or TX2300 as a cost-effective,
high performance RAID controller cards that add performance and/or reliability to
PC desktops and/or servers using Serial ATA drives.
FastTrak TX2200 and TX2300 have two independent data channels to support a
maximum of two Serial ATA drives and supports:
• Stripe (RAID 0) – Identical drives can read and write data in parallel to
increase performance.
• Mirror (RAID 1) – Mirror increases read performance through load balancing
and elevator sorting while creating a complete backup of your files.
A FastTrak TX2200 or TX2300 striped logical disk can double the sustained data
transfer rate of Serial ATA drives.
FastTrak TX2200 and TX2300 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.
Should a drive that is part of a mirrored logical disk fail, FastTrak TX2200 or
TX2300 use the mirrored drive (which contains identical data) to assume all data
handling. When a new replacement drive is later installed, FastTrak TX2200 or
TX2300 rebuild data to the new drive from the mirrored drive to restore fault
tolerance.
FastTrak TX2200 and TX2300 bootable BIOS supports individual drives larger
than 137 GB. With FAT32 and NTFS partitioning, the logical disk can be
addressed as one large single volume.