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Acard AEC-6896S User Manual

Pci-to-sata raid controller
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PCI-to-SATA RAID
Controller AEC-6896S/6896
User's Manual
Version 1.0
Copyright © 2003 ACARD Technology Corp.
Release: April 2003

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Summary of Contents for Acard AEC-6896S

  • Page 1 PCI-to-SATA RAID Controller AEC-6896S/6896 User’s Manual Version 1.0 Copyright © 2003 ACARD Technology Corp. Release: April 2003...

  • Page 2: Copyright And Trademarks

    ACARD and SCSIDE are the trademarks of ACARD Technology Corp. Microsoft and the Windows Logo are the registered trademarks, and Windows is the trade- mark of Microsoft Corporation.

  • Page 3: Table Of Contents

    Table of Contents Chapter 1 Introduction ........5 1.1 Overview ..............5 1.2 Features ..............5 1.3 Specifications ............5 1.4 Package..............6 Chapter 2 Hardware Installation......7 2.1 Quick Installation ..........7 2.2 The Board Layout..........7 2.3 Connection of Cable and Power Cord ....8 2.4 Compatibility ............
  • Page 4 4.3.1 Install the Driver ............22 4.3.2 Boot from AEC-6896 ............. 22 4.4 In Linux ..............22 Chapter 5 The AEC-68X5 Utility ...... 25 5.1 Install the Utility ..........25 5.2 Operate the Utility ..........25 5.2.1 File .................. 26 5.2.2 Action ................

  • Page 5: Chapter 1 Introduction

    Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Overview AEC-6896S is a 64-bit, 33MHz PCI-to-SATA RAID controller while AEC-6896 a 66MHz one. They all have 4 Serial ATA channels, and support RAID 0, 1, 0+1, JBOD and Normal modes. Their high performance and scalability are fit for servers and workstations.

  • Page 6: Package

    AEC-6896S/6896 Manual 1.4 Package When you open the package, please examine the following items. × AEC-6896S or AEC-6896 × Serial ATA Cable User’s Manual × ACARD Support CD Power Cord for Serial ATA hard drive (optional)

  • Page 7: Chapter 2 Hardware Installation

    AEC-6896S/6896 Manual Chapter 2 Hardware Installation 2.1 Quick Installation From this chapter on we simply take AEC-6896 to explain installation, etc. (1). Be sure that the system power has been off. (2). Open the housing of PC. (3). Insert AEC-6896 into an available PCI slot firmly.

  • Page 8: Connection Of Cable And Power Cord

    AEC-6896S/6896 Manual 2.3 Connection of Cable and Power Cord Connect the Serial ATA cable and the power cord to an IDE hard drive as follows. (1). Connect AEC-6896 and an IDE-to-SATA converter with the Serial ATA cable. (2). Connect the converter to the IDE hard drive.

  • Page 9: Compatibility

    AEC-6896 is particularly designed for DMA hard drive, and has been fully tested with the hard drives available in laboratory. It supports various ATA 66/100/133 hard drives and SATA ones as listed below. Seagate Maxtor Western Digital For the newest compatibility, please visit http://www.acard.com...

  • Page 10: Chapter 3 Bios Setup

    AEC-6896S/6896 Manual Chapter 3 BIOS Setup After installing AEC-6896 and booting the system, you will see the following figure appear immediately behind the figure of motherboard. The figure indicates your BIOS version, hard drive information, RAID status, etc. Figure 3-1 NOTICE: If a hard drive or array has been set as boot disk, there will be a * appearing before its model number or its first disk.

  • Page 11: Description Of Functions

    AEC-6896S/6896 Manual 3.1 Description of Functions á â On BIOS screen use < >,< > to change items, press <Enter> to select and con- firm, and press <Esc> to cancel or exit (return to previous screen). Meanwhile at the bottom of the screen, you can see the model numbers of hard drives connected to the channels, the capacity, the RAID status and class.

  • Page 12: Build Mirror Disk

    AEC-6896S/6896 Manual 3.1.2 Build Mirror Disk When replacing a mirrored hard drive, you can rebuild the hard drive’s data by “Build Mirror Disk” according to the prompt upon booting. Please see 3.2.2. NOTICE: The rebuilding time depends on the size of RAID. You can press Ctrl + S to stop rebuilding.

  • Page 13: Stripe Mode

    AEC-6896S/6896 Manual Select any array in “Set RAID Modes”, then press <Enter> to select a RAID mode. After selection, the screen will prompt “Please select disks to create array”, and the cursor will move to the display area of hard drive at the bottom of the screen. Use á...

  • Page 14: Mirror Mode

    AEC-6896S/6896 Manual 3.2.2 Mirror Mode This mode needs a pair of hard drives for each array. If the two hard drives you have chosen contain the same data, or different data that you don’t want to keep, you can select “Create Only”. But if not, please choose one of them as the source hard drive (label is disk0 or disk1), and copy the data from the source one to another.

  • Page 15: Stripe + Mirror Mode

    AEC-6896S/6896 Manual 3.2.3 Stripe + Mirror Mode This mode needs four hard drives. If your hard drives are ATA ones, you are sug- gested to set the disk jumper as CS. Besides, you have to select stripe block size, too.

  • Page 16: Chapter 4 System & Driver Installation

    AEC-6896S/6896 Manual Chapter 4 System & Driver Installation Driver installation varies somewhat in different operating systems. You can install the driver of AEC-6896 in an existing OS, or install a new OS to the hard drive connected to AEC-6896. The second method is to boot from AEC-6896.
  • Page 17 AEC-6896S/6896 Manual (3). Follow the wizard. Windows XP will require the driver’s location. Select “Include this location in the search”. (4). Select “Browse” to find the driver’s directory of AEC6896.inf such as A:\WinXP. Figure 4-2 (5). After the wizard finds the driver, click “Next” to install it.
  • Page 18 AEC-6896S/6896 Manual (6). Click “Continue Anyway” to continue the installation. Figure 4-4 (7). Follow the directions. The system will complete the setup automatically. Figure 4-5...
  • Page 19 AEC-6896S/6896 Manual (8). After setup, please boot the system again, and click “My Computer”. Figure 4-6 (9). Find “View system information”, and double click it. Figure 4-7...
  • Page 20 AEC-6896S/6896 Manual (10). In “System Properties”, click “Hardware” and then “Device Manager”. Figure 4-8 (11). Under “SCSI and RAID Controllers”, double click “ACARD AEC-6896 PCI RAID Controller” to see if the card has been installed successfully. Figure 4-9...

  • Page 21: Boot From Aec-6896

    AEC-6896S/6896 Manual NOTICE: During driver installation, if you encounter the problem of Win- dows logo, please click “Continue Anyway”. Windows logo is a mechanism designed to prevent OS from working abnormally because of installing unidentified software. Yet, the driver of AEC-6896 has been proven not to affect the entire work of OS.

  • Page 22: Boot From Aec-6896

    There are various Linux versions, and their installations are different. Here we take Red Hat Linux 7.3 and 8.0 to explain. The module named “aec6885” is also applicable to aec6895 and aec6896. It sup- ports ACARD AEC-6885/6895/6896 4-channel RAID controllers. In the following...
  • Page 23 AEC-6896S/6896 Manual instructions, we take AEC-68x5 to represent AEC-6885/6895/6896. Copy all contents of the files into a formatted floppy disk and label it as “AEC-68x5 RedHat Driver”. (1). Install AEC-68x5 driver into an existing system (both Red Hat 7.3 and 8.0): a.
  • Page 24 ** If your on-board hard drive contains important data or OS, it is strongly recom- mended to remove it first before installing Linux. Thus, the OS won’t be installed into a wrong disk. Please visit http://www.acard.com to download the latest driver and installation guide. The installation guide is in Readme.txt file.

  • Page 25: Chapter 5 The Aec-68X5 Utility

    AEC-6896S/6896 Manual Chapter 5 The AEC-68X5 Utility ACARD has designed a program called AEC-68X5 Utility for you to use the IDE card effectively. The utility will execute automatically after installation, setting and booting anew. 5.1 Install the Utility Please follow the three steps to install the utility.

  • Page 26: File

    AEC-6896S/6896 Manual Figure 5-2 5.2.1 File Click “File” to find “Exit”. It is used to leave the utility. But if you don’t like to end the program, you can click < -- > on the upper right of the window to minimize it.

  • Page 27: System Info

    AEC-6896S/6896 Manual 5.2.5 System Info Click “System Info” to find the information and status of your RAID and hard drives. 5.2.6 Event Log Click “Event Log” to find all important things about RAID such as the damage, re- moval, and adding of hard drives. However, in the beginning there is no record.

  • Page 28: Chapter 6 Troubleshooting

    AEC-6896S/6896 Manual Chapter 6 Troubleshooting After installing AEC-6896, if it cannot work normally, please follow the checklist given below to solve the problems. (1). Inspect if the power cord’s connectors are loose, or if the watt of power supply is not sufficient.

  • Page 29: Appendix A About Raid

    AEC-6896S/6896 Manual Appendix A About RAID RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) is a system composed of many hard drives; that is, a pair of hard drives or more unite into a whole drive or an array. For the system only one hard drive is revealed. The advantages of RAID technology are increasing the read/write speed of a hard drive, achieving better data protection, and enlarging the capacity of a single drive like Drive C, Drive D, etc.

  • Page 30: Raid 0+1 (Striping/Mirroring)

    AEC-6896S/6896 Manual It is suggested to compose RAID 1 with hard drives of the same capacity. Because the capacity of mirrored disk array is that of the smallest hard drive. For example, a 100GB hard drive and a 120GB one unite into RAID 1. The capacity is 100GB.

  • Page 31: Appendix B Make An Installation Disk

    AEC-6896S/6896 Manual Appendix B Make An Installation Disk For installing an OS like Windows 2000/NT/XP into a hard drive with ACARD con- troller, you need a floppy disk containing the controller’s driver to boot the hard drive. Please follow the steps below to make an ACARD controller’s driver disk.
  • Page 32 AEC-6896S/6896 Manual 3. Under the “Driver” folder find your controller’s model number. For example, AEC- 6880’s driver is Driver>IDE>AEC6880V1.3.
  • Page 33 AEC-6896S/6896 Manual 4. Choose the driver folder, and right-click “Send to 3.5” floppy”. Meanwhile insert an empty disk into floppy drive. 5. Now use the driver disk to boot the hard drive and install the OS.

  • Page 34: Appendix C Aspitool32 Manager

    Windows OS while they are connected with the ACARD SCSI or IDE controller. The ASPITool32 Manager program is proudly de- veloped by ACARD. You may get the setup program from the ACARD Driver CD. ASPITool32 Manager Functions 1.FDsik: Create a partition on the hard drive.
  • Page 35 AEC-6896S/6896 Manual Technical Support Form Email: support@acard.com http://www.acard.com Model F/W Version AEC-6896/6896S System Configuration Motherboard BIOS version SCSI adapter Chipset Memory Display card Other I/O card OS version Hard Disk Configuration Hard Disk Model/type Capacity Firmware version Others Problem Description...

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