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ASUS PCI-DA2200 User’s Manual
Chapter 1
Introduction
The ASUS PCI-DA2200 is a PCI-to-SCSI RAID controller specifically
designed to provide RAID 0, 1, 3 or 5 capability to any host system
equipped with a Little Endian PCI Local Bus interface. All the RAID
functions of ASUS PCI-DA2200 are performed by an AMD 5x86 CPU
coupled with high-speed DRAMs and firmware in flash memory. In
effect, it endows the host system with the high-performance and
fault-tolerant disk storage operation of RAID technology. It is also an
ideal solution for weaving several hard disks into one contiguous
volume.
The controller has comprehensive drive failure management that
allows automatic reassignment of reserved blocks when a bad sector
is encountered during a write. Hot-swapping is supported through
automatic disconnection of a failed drive and detection of a reserved
drive followed with background rebuilding of data. The controller
also supports spare drive operation. Remarkably, all of these failure
recovery procedures are transparent to the host system.
The ASUS PCI-DA2200 has been designed with ease of integration
and maintenance in mind. The major features are described in the
next chapter.
The controller already includes all the major
operational requirements for a RAID subsystem. The overall features
of a fully-built RAID subsystem will, however, depend on the actual
components used and the creativity of the integrator.