Package & Installation
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| The Hyperdisk Package |
The Hyperdisk controller that was sent to us was a factory sealed package, and just as you would buy from your local computer store. The RAID kit includes the Hyperdisk controller card itself, 2 – 80 wire IDE cables, and drivers for all flavors of Windows including 2000. In addition there was a small
quick setup flyer included, and some other registration cards, and finally a CD with some management utilities and an online manual / users guide. For the most part we were impressed with everything AMI included in the package –however we do wish they would have included a manual in paperback form instead of on the CD. Call me picky, but I really like to hold something when I read it :) Other than that little nit-pick everything included is all you’ll need –minus the drives to get your RAID setup and configured quickly.
Installation for us was simple. As with the older Hyperdisk 66 –the newer 100 controller card uses the same post-POST menu <CTRL+M> to access the controllers BIOS and change your RAID parameters. We found the menus easy to navigate and flexible to whatever RAID array you may chose to configure. For example –to start we configured a simple RAID 0. All there was to configure, was choosing the drives to be included in the RAID, then choosing what cluster size you want (which went from 32k all the way to 4096k!) and then saving the configuration and exiting. The Hyperdisk 100 has the ability to be used in a RAID 0, RAID 1, or in a spare pool (RAID 0+1) -although cluster sizing is only available when using a RAID 0 configuration. In all our tests we found each RAID setup to be a synch!
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| Closeup of the Card |
After configuring the RAID controller card itself –booting into the Windows 98se OS yielded us the typical <
New Hardware Found> prompt, and said it found a PCI RAID controller. Once the install was pointed to the 3.5” disk on floppy, the system rebooted and whaola –we had a fully functional RAID! Unfortunately the added RAID software utility doesn’t work under Windows 98se –but we did try just for kicks :) The utility requires the Microsoft Management Console version 1.1 to be installed, along with Internet Explorer 5 –all of which are included on the software CD. But make no mistake –it doesn’t work under Windows 98! So we used it in our Windows NT 4.0 sp6 machine.
To say the least –the RAID software utility is a nice addition! For those who use Microsoft Management console, the interface is going to be REAL familiar and most of the drive and controller options are easy to find and figure out. Even for those who aren’t used to working in a management console, it’s not hard to figure out, plus AMI included the full manual accessible through the console just in case you get stumped on where to find or do something.
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