Promise controllers and I are old friends, all the way back to their first ATA RAID controller. Their latest is the Promise FastTrak S150 SX4: a four port Serial ATA RAID controller. Looking at the image, you’re probably thinking you’ve seen it somewhere before: the S150 SX4 shares the same PCB layout and size as the SX4000. The only differences are the SATA connectors and the Marvell PATA to SATA converter chips. For a complete rambling on the Marvell chip check out our 3ware Escalade 8506-8 review.

This time around I didn’t get a retail package for review, but a review’s package. What should come in the box is the controller, SATA cables, installation manual, and drivers and management software on 3.5” floppy disk and CD-ROM. In case you’re wondering the review’s package came with the controller, photocopied manual, burned CD, reviewer’s guide and 128 MB DIMM. You’re not missing out on anything, and it’s a good thing I already had SATA cables.

Looking at the S150 SX4 board layout, it’s a match to the SX4000. The same single Promise PDC20621 ASIC to handle XOR ( RAID 5 parity calculations ) and the four ATA channels. What’s been added to the S150 SX4 are four Marvell 88i8030-TBC parallel to serial ATA converter chips. As well and I2C connector is in the top left, for those motherboards that support it for system monitoring. The only mention of it in the user manual is in the board layout. A very large board that in it’s next version will be about half that size. It’s interesting that the four status lights from the SX4000 have been dropped: since they weren’t documented it’s left a mystery.

Installation was very simple. I configured an array via the S150 SX4’s BIOS, called FastBuild. Entering Windows 2000 I was prompted for drivers, then a reboot and installation of the PAM utility.

Feature wise Promise has everything there you’ll need. It’s a 32 bit 66 MHz PCI controller capable of bursting 266 MB per second. It handles four SATA drives in configurations of RAID 0, 1, 10, 5 and JBOD ( just a bunch of disks ). The manual and all configuration screens I encountered showed the S150 SX4 handling RAID 0+1 and not RAID 10, but the Promise website and it’s datasheet both list RAID 10. Check our RAID Types to see the difference. Promise calls it’s ability to recover from an error by drive hot swapping or hot replacing PerfectRAID, although all controllers support this. With Promise they would like you to use their Superswap 1100 enclosures. Cache is required for the controller to operate, and a user installed SDRAM DIMM of 64 – 256 MB must be installed. I found it funny that page 30 of the user manual shows an example of the BIOS configuration with a 512MB DIMM installed.

Management of the S150 SX4 is handled via the Promise Array Management, or PAM. This utility has been around for some time, but is updated for every generation of Promise cards. It’s very clean the menus follow a nice flow. IT has the usual features: array build, monitoring and SMART support, email and pager notification. It’s standout feature in my opinion is array expansion and conversion, covered on pages 67 -73 of the PAM user manual. This allows an array to be expanded by adding more disks, or converted to another RAID level. Some caveats of course, but it works and works well. I added a fourth disk to a RAID 5 array. It was time consuming but worthwhile. Once completed it’s best to use a partition management package to resize the partition and get the benefit of the extra space. This functionality screams out for a controller that can handle more than four drives: when will Promise match 3ware’s eight and twelve drive controllers?

Performance has been increased substantially to match the 3ware Escalade 8506, judging by our extensive benchmarks. While the previous Promise SX4000 trailed the 3ware Escalade 7500 across the board, now we see a neck and neck race. Promise pulls ahead of the competition in price: the FastTrak S150 SX4 can be found for almost half of the 3ware Escalade 8506-4, it’s direct competitor. Where it falls short is drive capacity and PCB size: let’s see some 12 port SATA controllers in a low profile PCI-X packaging. If four drives are all you need, the Promise FastTrak S150 SX4 is the SATA controller for you.

Editors note: this review was migrated from the old eBabble.net site and the photos updated. Originally published November 28th 2003.

I’ve been a big Promise fan since the original FastTrak (later renamed FastTrak33 to fit with the product line). At the time I had a bunch of 2 GB Western Digital hard drives that I didn’t know what to do with. The idea of using a RAID controller to make one big 8 GB ( wow, that’s big ) drive was fantastic. Of course there were some growing pains, but the card worked great. What’s even better is that I just requested a new BIOS chip for the card and it was sent for free; unfortunately Promise didn’t switch to a flash BIOS until the FastTrak66. But as usual I digress.

In the early days of ATA RAID controllers RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 was the limit of availability, thus relegating it to workstations and enthusiast machines. Of course SCSI RAID controllers allowed for so much more, but at an exorbitant prices which flew in the face of the entire ATA RAID concept. Adaptec was the first to release an ATA RAID 5 controller, the AAA-UDMA, which was a SCSI RAID card with a “translation” chip for IDE drives. It’s performance was adequate, but more importantly paved the way for Promise SuperTrak100, and the rest is history.

My focus has shifted to RAID 5 controllers, since they are perfect for entry level servers used in small to medium enterprises ( SME or SMB ). Today’s motherboards bundle RAID 0, 1 controllers onboard for a minimal charge, and Intel and VIA are now building them into their chipsets with the advent of serial ATA. Unlike these controllers, RAID 5 requires some hardware horsepower to calculate the parity bits and spread the data across the array. Onboard RAM is also a necessity, along with the CPU and ATA controllers bringing the complexity and cost of the product up. Imagine my surprise when I heard of the Promise FastTrak SX4000 RAID 5 controller selling for less than half of it’s competitors.

The SX4000 is a new step for Promise in a lot of ways. Their two previous RAID 5 cards, the SuperTrak100 and the SuperTrak SX6000, used Intel i960 processors along with three Promise ATA ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuit ). They were full length PCI cards with six IDE connections, one RAM slot and battery backup.

Let’s look at the SX4000. Cracking open the box we get the card, a quick start guide, a product manual, drivers and software on 3.5” floppy and CD-ROM, four 80 wire 40 ping ATA cables and two thick molex power “y” splitters. On to the card: it’s a mid length ( not small but not full length ) PCI card with four ATA connections. Bottom right is the 168 pin DIMM slot for SDRAM from 64 MB to 256 MB. A small speaker sits above. The only processor or ASIC onboard is the Promise PDC20621, which is described in the literature as an XOR engine. This single chip solution saves cost from the previous SuperTrak series, described above. On the faceplate are four red status lights; it’s interesting to note they’re not mentioned in any of the literature as to what they do. From the card layout you can also see what isn’t there: a spot for a battery backup in the bottom left and one can only guess what that space in the top right is for.

Installation was straightforward: plug the card into an available PCI slot, either 32 or 64 bit, 33 or 66 MHz. The SX4000 is a 66 MHz 32 bit PCI controller capable of 266 MB/s maximum. I installed an available 256 MB ECC DIMM in it’s single memory slot: you can use 64, 128 or a 256 MB DIMM. The case I’m using, and Antec SLK3700AMB, has three drive lights, so I connected one of them to the header on the SX4000. Hooked up the four drives and powered the system. The card is longer than most PCI adapters, but it isn’t full length either. I had to move one of my hard drives to accommodate it, but that was the only issue. For some reason all AMD 768 MP motherboards put the 64 bit 66MHz PCI slots in the middle of the board, instead of the bottom where most cases leave room.

Once the SX4000 initialized it prompted me to enter the BIOS and define an array. Here you can view, define, delete or repair an array. RAID levels 0, 1, 0+1, 5 and JBOD (just a bunch of disks) are supported. As well all these functions and more can be performed in the operating system via the Promise Array Management, or PAM in Windows and the Array Utility in Linux. That’s right, the SX4000 is supported in various Windows and Linux flavors. For this review Windows 2000 Server is used. The BIOS interface is dead easy, and arrays can be deleted and created with no delay or wait time.

Booting into Windows 2000 server I installed the drivers and rebooted. The SX4000 shows as a SCSI device in Device Manager, as do all ATA RAID controllers. The array shows under disk drives as a Promise Array. Installing the Promise Array Management utility was another non event, but a username and password has to be created for array management. Once installed PAM can be managed from any PC over the network by installing PAM wherever and selecting remote management. PAM is straightforward to use and allows for the gamut of options, including enabling write back cache. I didn’t find this aided performance, and the default is having it disabled. Changes to an array require a reboot, but it nice to make changes remotely and schedule a reboot without interacting with the machine.

Performance was excellent, in relation to the SX4000’s abilities and cost. Check the benchmarks and testbed for more information. Promise designed the card as a one chip solution, covering the ATA controllers, RAID calculation and the like. Check the cache size comparison to see what fits your needs; I anticipated better performance from more cache, but that’s not the case.

I’ve had this card for the better part of six months, trying to arrange competitors. It performed flawlessly across three platforms as I ran various benchmarks and changed my platform and software. I that time there were BIOS and driver revisions, which were implemented on this final benchmarking and platform.

As I went to format a RAID 5 array for the final PCMark2002 benchmark, I received an error that the format failed. I played around and ran diagnostics on all the drives individually, plus used them with other ATA RAID controllers without incident. I submitted an incident report via the Promise website, or tried to. For two days the form created SQL errors. On the third day it went through, but I didn’t receive a reply. I waited more than a week and didn’t hear back again. I’m sending an email with the same information this week and will post what happens. This is my first bad experience with Promise’s tech support, and I’m hoping it only a bug with their online reporting form.

I heartily recommend this card for users looking to utilize four or less drives in a RAID 5 array. It’s half the cost of the Adapter 2400A or 3ware 7500 series, even with the additional purchase of the required DIMM.

Update / Revision

May 30th 2003

After my email to tech support I received an answer three days later suggesting the problem lay with the DIMM I was using. Replacing it with an available 128 MB ECC PC133 DIMM seemed to do the trick.

August 9th 2003

Promise has released new drivers, BIOS and PAM for the SX4000. Included is a utility to test memory installed on the card. As well Windows Server 2003 drivers are included.

Editors note: this review was migrated from the old eBabble.net site and the photos updated. Originally published May 22nd 2003.

But that’s alright, as I had a spare server already set up.  A Tyan 2882-D motherboard, two Opteron 246 CPUs, four 1 GB PC2100 DDR ECC RAM, 3ware Escalade 9550SX RAID controller, two 80 GB WD SATA hard drives, four 250 GB Maxtor SATA hard drives, all wrapped in an Antec Titan server case.  Very nice indeed.  The motherboard was a bit old but had what I needed: 133 MHz PCI-X slots for the RAID controller.  Everything else was onboard, but it only has USB 1.1 connections.  The RAM was slow for the CPUs. but I had PC2100 around and didn’t have PC3200 ECC.

The big thing was getting my data off the existing server and migrating it to the new server.  Since the new would be using the old’s IP address network connection was out of the question, plus it would be too slow.  I didn’t have a PATA hard drive big enough to hold my 300 GB of data, so I couldn’t use the native ports on the old server, which was a dual Athlon MP system and pre-SATA.  I had four 500 GB Maxtor SATA hard drives that were going into my backup machine running Windows Home Server, so I pulled one of those and connected it to the old server’s 3ware Escalade 8506 SATA RAID controller.  I’m a big fan of 3ware and they’ve always been generous enough to supply me with controller cards for my ATA RAID testing.

While moving all the files off the degraded RAID array and onto the single 500 GB Maxtor, I installed Small Business Server 2003 R2 onto the new Opteron server.  It was a long process, but it was still done before the file copying.  Thankfully the RAID array didn’t degrade any further.  Once it was completed I hooked to 500 GB Maxtor to a spare port on the 3ware 9550SX and booted the system.  The drive was recognized but I had to designate it as a single drive before the OS would recognize it, something I didn’t have to do with the 8506.  Once recognized on the new system the drive appeared as unpartitioned!  Bells ringing in my head I tried a few things but saw this wasn’t going to work.

Luckily the Tyan 2882-D has an onboard Silicon Image SATA controller, the sort of in-between step vendors took when SATA was introduced.  I enabled it in the BIOS and saw the hard drive was recognized, but now the machine wanted to boot from it instead of the 9550SX.  I popped into the BIOS and checked the boot order: three slots were available, but with the Silicon Image controller enabled the 9550SX was no longer an option.

I quickly disabled the Silicon Image controller and brought the Maxtor 500 GB back to the old server.  Hooking it back up to the 8506 showed a bare unpartitioned drive, so connecting it these RAID controllers was causing some problem.  I pulled the Promise SATA300TX4 from the Windows Home Server and installed it into the old Athlon MP server; it wouldn’t be needed until I could put the 500 GB drive back into the Windows Home Server anyway.  Fired the older server back up and put the drivers in for the SX300TX4.  Started the copying process again, still hoping the degraded array would be fine for just a few more hours.

Data copied I moved the Promise SX300TX4 into the new system but found the same BIOS issue.  Pulling my hair and cursing the system I pulled the motherboard and put in a Tyan 2892 I had on the shelf that I had foolishly purchased on eBay without a need and so left it in the box for a year.  This board had the Nvidia Nforce Professional chipset with native SATA and lots of BIOS boot options.  Copied the data over without issue, finally.

I posted a review of the Promise SATA300 TX4 but needed a high quality pic.  There’s a tiny picture on the Promise website but when you click “Enlarge Image” you end up with a picture of a different model.  Contacted Promise tech support for a photo and to let them know of the problem but so far I’ve been ignored.  To be fair I’ve been emailing old Promise contacts I had from the RAID review days; who really knows if they’re still around?

Rethinking my whole home software setup. involving a hardware shuffle and software reload.  Currently my SBS 2003 install runs on a home built Athlon MP server.  With my TechNet subscription I wanted to update to SBS 2003 R2 anyways, so my big home built dual Opteron server will become the main home server.  Lots of work there.

Each day I use Windows Home Server beta 2 the more I appreciate it, and hope it’s main features will make it into a future SBS version.  Automated nightly backup with no file duplication is a fantastic feature, especially as it allows bare metal restore.  The beta team ask that RAID isn’t used, but with it’s folder duplication I feel too much space is being wasted.  I’ll rebuild this server as well with 500 MB hard drives and a RAID 5 adapter.

Finished Titan Quest Immortal Throne.  This is an expansion back, and is a Diablo-esque game with monster killing and weapon collecting.  The expansion added some much needed features such as auto sorting your loot storage and providing additional storage space in towns.  Look for a full review shortly.

A little searching gave me one choice for a card with what I was looking for, the Promise SATA300 TX4. To be fair there may be other cards available, but I’m a long time Promise fan (although it’s around $80 CDN). This is strictly a controller card, nothing fancy. It has four SATA ports, individual and aggregate LED headers and an SMBus connector for Promise enclosures only. In the center is the Promise controller chip, PDC40718-GP. It’s a low profile card that comes with the standard PCI slot cover and a low profile version in the box, along with four SATA cables and a semi generic CD that covers four different Promise SATA controllers. Like it’s competitors it’s 32 bit 66 MHz PCI; PCI-X 133 would have been nice.

Installation was dead easy; it’s a PCI card! I connected my drives and installed Windows Home Server beta 2. Loaded the drivers and then installed the Promise Disk Controller Management Utility. This gave a nice showing of drive information connected to the Promise SATA ports and provided exactly one option: enable or disable Native Command Queuing / Tagged Command Queuing. Check with your hard drive manufacturer to see if your drives support this feature; it intelligently arranges hard drive requests so they come off the spinning platters with as few drive head movements as possible, thus speeding up your drive reads. This really could have been added to the BIOS so you don’t have to fiddle with a one option utility, but I’m nitpicking here.

I thought about benchmarking but couldn’t see the point of it: this card is for people who want to add SATA ports with NCQ to a computer. Yes performance is important, and my day to day usage revealed no performance or compatibility issues. If you’re in the market for such a card, the Promise SATA300 TX4 is a solid choice.

I’ve talked a lot about ATA RAID these last few months, but have left out an important aspect of fault tolerance. To accompany a hot swappable RAID card like the SuperTrak100, you need removable drive cages or chassis. Promise has seen this need and released the SuperSwap Chassis, a lockable IDE removable drive housing.

The SuperSwap comes in a fancy box with the following inside; a plastic drive housing, a steel drive cage, mounting screws and a small manual. The drive housing is screwed into a 5.25” drive bay and has a spring loaded flap to cover the opening when the drive cage is removed. The front has a key lock and two status lights for power and activity. The steel drive cage has a locking mechanism on the lid and has a cooling fan on the rear. Inside is a Molex power connector and an 80 wire 40 pin ATA drive cable. Installation is straight forward: connect your hard drive into the drive cage, screw it in place and slide it into the drive housing.

Let’s answer the important question of why one would need this product. You’ve purchased a Promise RAID card and are using it for fault tolerance, i.e. in a RAID 1 or 5 configuration where drive redundancy is utilized. One of your drives goes down and you need to replace it but can’t shut down the system. With an external removable drive chassis you pull out the drive cage, replace the hard drive and slide it back into the housing. Set the RAID adapter to rebuild the array and everything’s back to normal. While this “mission critical” scenario may sound like it would never apply to your business, most offices with more than 10 employees can’t afford to shut the server down for 30 minutes.

Now that we know how it works, let’s see how it’s made possible. One thing we know about IDE hard drives is never unplug any cables when the system’s running. Hot swapping is accomplished this way; the key lock has to be engaged for the unit to receive power, so when you unlock it to remove the cage power is cut and the drive is protected. Simple in use and circumvents any problems. Of course I didn’t read the manual and couldn’t figure out why the drives weren’t powering up after I installed them. Live and learn.

When used in conjunction with the SuperCheck monitoring software, you can see full status details on the chassis including fan RPM and drive temperature. Keep in mind that these are a great accompaniment to the SuperTrak series, and Promise bundles them together and calls them the Pro series. The only drawback is price; around $130 each, which is way too much. If you can pick up a SuperTrak100 Pro kit for around $900 which includes the SuperTrak100 and three SuperSwap chassis.

Editors note: this review was migrated from the old eBabble.net site and the photos updated. Originally published March 9th 2001.

When one thinks of ATA RAID, the first name that comes to mind is Promise. The first company to mass market a controller for IDE drives continues the FastTrak line from the original to the 66 and 100 models, each accommodating a new generation of ATA specs.

Looking at the features offered, very little has changed between the three models other than the ATA spec supported. All three FastTrak’s support four disks in the following configurations: RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 0+1. The FastTrak100 supports JBOD ( just a bunch of disks ) which takes all disks connected and uses them contiguously. The 66 and 100 models support flashable BIOS, while the 33 model requires a new BIOS chip from Promise. To compare the three cards, FastTrak ( FastTrak33 for this review ), FastTrak66 and FastTrak100, I installed them in the RAID Projects test machine and benchmark criteria.

Everything from packaging to board layout has remained consistent, aside from a chip shuffle. Opening the box reveals the FastTrak series adapter, four IDE cables, a manual and a bunch of floppy disks. Looking at the image above shows the board layout, with the Promise controller chip and BIOS, along with two ATA connectors and a four pin LED connector. The original 33 model had two controller chips, a Promise PDC20247 and a PDC20246. The 66 and 100 models use one controller chip, the PDC 20262 and PDC20267 respectively. An interesting side note: the SuperTrak100 uses the PDC20265 while the FastTrak100 uses the PDC20267, yet they both are used to control ATA100 drives.

Installation and setup was straightforward with all models. Insert the card, hook up the drives and run the BIOS setup. Again basically the same screens across the line; either let the card configure itself through a simple menu selection or configure it yourself by choosing drives and RAID levels. Unlike the RAID 5 adapters previously reviewed, RAID setup cannot be configured in software and must be done through the cards setup at boot.

I should point out that I flashed the 66 and 100 models to BIOS version 1.30 build 12. Promise uses one unified driver and utility set for all cards, and maintains BIOS versions across the flashable models. For the 33 model I ordered the 1.06 BIOS two years ago, but to date it’s at version 1.08. I ordered it but didn’t receive in time for this review. The drivers uses were 1.30 build 42.

Driver and utility installation went smoothly in my Windows 2000 Professional testbed. The OS recognized the 33 and 66 models and installed default drivers. I upgraded them to 1.30 without problems. One interesting anomaly; after installing the 33 model I found the OS was seeing the hard drives as individual 20 GB drives, not as the RAID 0 four drive 80 GB array I set up.

The FastCheck utility allows for simple maintenance of your RAID arrays. Status screens shows the drive specs hooked to the adapter and what configuration used. An options page lets you set criteria such as event logging, PCI bus utilization, synch and rebuild settings for RAID 0 and 0+1 arrays. A fair number of options present, and the ability to schedule an array synchronization for late hours gives peace of mind.

The manual is well laid out with a thorough examination of all hardware and software options and settings. While not necessary, a good read gives one a complete knowledge of what Promise has delivered. I especially liked the RAID definitions and frequently asked questions provided. Very informative.

Benchmarks paint a promising picture ( ouch, bad pun ). Unfortunately it was at this point that my FastTrak66 gave up the ghost and wouldn’t work. I’ve tried everything and resorted to returning it for repair. Looking at the scores from the 33 and 100 models show very similar results, with the variance easily credited to the improved interface. While the ATA specs’ high end only come into play during some burst operations, there is a divide between 33 MB/s and 100 MB/s.

I’m a big fan of Promise’s line of products and heartily recommend the FastTrak series. Keep in mind a RAID 0 array won’t make loading Windows or playing games that much faster. RAID should be used for redundancy, backup or when there is a need for large disks.

Editors note: this review was migrated from the old eBabble.net site and the photos updated. Originally published January 29th 2001.

]]> http://tech.ebabble.net/promise-fasttrak/feed 1 http://tech.ebabble.net/promise-supertrak100 http://tech.ebabble.net/promise-supertrak100#comments Fri, 26 Jan 2007 19:24:29 +0000 Scott VanderPloeg http://www.ebabble.net/reviews/promise-supertrak100/

The second card in our ATA RAID project is the Promise SuperTrak100.  Promise has had a long standing relationship with ATA RAID in the form of their FastTrak line, which we’ll look at next week.  With the SuperTrak line Promise adds RAID 3 and 5 along with RAID 0, 1 and 0+1.  Two models are available; the SuperTrak66 which is an ATA66 card with a four drive capacity, and the SuperTrak100 which boasts ATA100 connectivity with a six drive capacity. Let’s examine the card from box to benchmarks.

Upon opening the Promise SuperTrak100 box you see it’s a full size PCI adapter, the same length as the Adaptec AAA-UDMA we looked at last week.  Also included are six 80 wire 40 pin single drive cables, two manuals and three 3.5” disks.  The adapter has six IDE channel connections, three Promise PDC20265 controller chips, an Intel i960RD CPU, a battery, an alarm, a 72 PIN SIMM slot with a 16 MB EDO SIMM, an LED connector and four LED’s along the backplane.

Promise has followed Adaptec’s lead again in the drive setup, with one drive per channel connection. This is to eliminate any waiting on each channel; with a traditional two drive channel setup only one drive communicates over the bus at a time.  The two items needed for a RAID 3 or 5 adapter are cache and a processor to handle the parity distribution.  The SuperTrak100 handles anywhere from 8 MB to 128 MB, but the 16 MB included is more than adequate.  The Intel i960 is an I2O ( intelligent I/O ) compliant processor that handles the parity information and allows for network management of the adapter. Some complex concepts that deserve a closer look, so make sure to check out those links.

Installation was straightforward and easy enough, but perusing the “Quick Installation Guide” walks through everything you need to do.  I connected four drives and entered the BIOS setup to see what was what; Promise refers to their BIOS setup as SuperBuild and their Windows setup as SuperCheck.  The standard Promise configuration allowed me to quickly setup my array as I’ve used FastTrak adapters. Once configured I rebooted and entered Windows 2000 and installed the drivers and SuperCheck suite.

SuperCheck consists of three parts: message server, message agent and monitoring utility.  Through these the SuperTrak100 can be configured and monitored locally or across the network, even over the internet.  All the important information that’s available with SCSI RAID controllers is present here, showing Promise’s commitment to giving a quality adapter that rivals any SCSI setup.  The adapter, drives, users and configurations are represented as icons for easy navigation and I had no trouble moving around. SuperCheck’s three components are installed as services: while the SuperTrak100 requires Windows 2000 or NT for installation, it can be monitored from any Windows 9x machine.  The user’s manual covers all aspects of setup and monitoring thoroughly, and is a good read.

Also part of the monitoring available is for Promise’s SuperSwap 5.25” removable drive housings.  These only work with Promise adapters and provide a solid removable solution for hot swapping which is supported by the SuperTrak100.  In fact it’s the only ATA RAID adapter to do so, but these housings don’t come cheap.  SuperCheck monitors cable, temperature and fan status allowing for a complete picture for a remote operator.  I’m trying a few out and will have an in depth review shortly.

The benchmarks show the SuperTrak100 to be a good performer all around and the fastest ATA RAID 5 adapter available.  It’s important to remember that RAID 5 is not used for performance but reliability and fault tolerance in a reasonably fast manner.  I am disappointed that RAID 0 scores are below those of the FastTrak100; it seems the cache and i960 processor are more a hindrance in this setup.

If you’re looking for an ATA RAID solution that handles levels 3 and 5, or need hot swap capability, or require remote monitoring, then the SuperTrak series is for you.  It’s got a lot going for it, but in a server environment.  If your concern is speed or redundancy via RAID 0 or 0+1, go with another adapter and save a few dollars.

Editors note: this review was migrated from the old eBabble.net site and the photos updated.  Originally published January 27th 2001.