Preparing A Boot Device And Installing Drivers; Getting Ready To Prepare A Boot Device - Adaptec AHA-3980 User Manual

Preparing a Boot Device and
Installing Drivers
This chapter explains how to prepare a boot device connected to
your AHA-398x adapter and how to install the DOS and NetWare
drivers you will need to load software and to use arrays.
The boot device can be an array or a stand-alone disk drive. We rec-
ommend that you boot your computer from an array, because you
can take advantage of the data redundancy provided by most levels
of RAID. (See Chapter 2, Array Basics, to learn about the features of
different RAID levels.) If you boot from a stand-alone disk drive,
you can use a SCSI drive connected to the AHA-398x adapter or a
non-SCSI drive (usually an IDE or EIDE drive).
If a non-SCSI drive is installed in your computer, the computer will
always attempt to boot from that drive and will never boot from a
SCSI drive or array.

Getting Ready to Prepare a Boot Device

Follow these steps, regardless of whether you plan to boot from an
array or from a stand-alone disk drive. We assume here that
MS-DOS and NetWare are not already installed on the computer
with the AHA-398x adapter. You will need to have access to a sec-
ond computer.
1
Complete the hardware installation steps in Chapter 5.
2
Be sure the intended boot drive—or at least one drive that will
be in the boot array—is connected to Channel A of the
AHA-398x.
AHA-3980/3980W/3985/3985W User's Guide
Stock Number: 510810-00, Rev. D
Print Spec Number: 493479-00
Current Date: 3/1/99
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Page: 6-1
ECN Date: 3/19/96