Expressraid Provides Driver Information - ATTO Technology R30F Installation And Operation Manual

10 ExpressRAID Provides Driver Information

Devices (floppy drives, serial ports, hard drives, tape drives, CD-ROMs, etc.) communicate with the Operating
System, and with applications, through special programs called device drivers. ExpressRAID handles drivers
automatically.
A device driver typically controls a specific
device: the driver controlling your floppy drive is
different from the driver controlling your CD-
ROM drive. Each driver has a unique driver
reference number or refNum.
ExpressRAID is only concerned with SCSI device
drivers. A panel on the left side of the main
application window displays all SCSI devices and
controllers found during scanning. Double-
clicking on a device or pressing the information
button displays a device information window.
This window displays the name and reference
number of the device driver controlling the
device. If this device is a disk drive, and has an
ATTO driver physically installed in its driver
partition, it also displays the name and version of
that driver.
The drive(s) used in the creation of the volume(s)
need to be controlled by a driver.
Standard HFS volumes are controlled by either
.ATTOMGDAHFS driver, a single-purpose HFS
driver created by ExpressRAID, or a third-party
driver which you supply.
The ATTO driver may be loaded off an ATTO
extension .ExpressRAID extension:ExpressRAID
Ext (version)
Installing the ExpressRAID Driver
system performance, all drives on a system should
use the same disk driver. The install driver option
allows you to install the ExpressRAID Driver on
all SCSI Drives without altering the volumes on
that drive.
To install the ExpressRAID Driver on a drive
1 select that drive from the Device Window
2 Select Install Driver from the Utilities Menu.
NOTE Always backup hard drives before installing a new
driver to prevent the loss of data if any errors occur. In
some cases the driver partition already on a drive may not
be big enough for the ExpressRAID driver so you would
have to re-initialize the volume to install it.
21 ATTO Technology ExpressRAID for Macintosh
What's the difference between the driver in
memory... and the driver on the disk?
in memory controls the device, and continues to
control the device until you shut your system
down.
The driver on disk is usually where the driver in
memory was loaded from. Only one ATTO driver
needs to be in memory. At boot-time, each disk
attempts to load (and run) its driver. The ATTO
drivers have the intelligence to load only once.
Only one .ATTOMGDAHFS driver can be loaded
into memory.
Sequence for finding ATTO drivers at boot-time
1
2
3
Removable cartridges.
ATTO driver for each Direct-Access or Optical
(Type 0 or 7) SCSI device (other than a CD-ROM)
For optimum
that isn't already being controlled by another
third-party driver. If you later install a cartridge in
your removable drive, it is controlled by the
ATTO driver loaded from the extension.
If you have a drive with its own driver, you should
probably use it. Removable drive manufacturers
usually supply drivers in the form of an extension.
Our extension is named so that it loads last,
allowing other driver extensions to control their
devices rather than asking the ExpressRAID
driver to control the device.
All SCSI controllers are scanned for
devices.
If an ATTO driver is found on a disk, it is
loaded into memory.
If an older driver is loaded first, the newer
driver will never be used. If ExpressRAID
senses an older driver on your system, it
suggests that you replace it with the newer
driver. Unless you've been instructed by
ATTO Tech Support to specifically use an
older driver, you would want the latest
driver.
The extension loads up an
The driver