Supports 66MHz and 33MHz PCI Bus Motherboards
Promise FastTrak SX series of ATA RAID products support 66MHz PCI bus motherboards to provide up to 266 MB per second data transfers across the PCI bus. This permits sustained data transfers that exceed 33MHz PCI bus transfers of 133MB/sec and assures maximum data throughput.

RAID 5 for Enterprise-Level Data Protection
Under RAID 5, FastTrak SX4000 offers one of the highest levels of protection from a failed drive available in storage today, RAID 5. Stored data is striped over all attached drives (3 drives minimum) for storage capacity and performance. In addition, the card continuously generates and stripes XOR parity data among the drives. This allows SX4000 to rebuild data if a drive fails without needing to create an exact mirror of all stored data. Users benefit from greater storage capacity equal to up to three of the arrayed drives (parity data makes up the rest of the data in the array) and performance. Should a drive fail, SX4000 maintains user access to data by onboard parity calculation. Once a drive is replaced, SX4000 rebuilds data on the drive automatically. The user keeps working without losing data even if one drive fails. SX4000 also supports using a hot spare drive to immediately replace a failed drive for immediate data rebuilding under RAID 1, or 5.

Hot Swap Support
When drives are contained in optional removable SuperSwap™ 1000 chassises, FastTrak SX4000 running fault tolerant RAID 1 (drive mirroring), RAID 0+1 (two-drive mirroring and striping), or RAID 5 allows for hot swap operation. This allow zero-downtime PC operation and continuous data access even if a failed drive is being replaced because the PC server remains running. SuperSwap chassises protect all system components during hot swap and are monitored by the Promise Array Management Utility (PAM) for voltage, temperature, and fan operation.

48-Bit Large LBA
FastTrak SX4000 BIOS supports 48-bit large LBA mode that permits use of drives that exceed 137GB each for extended storage capacity.

Independent Master-Channel Design Simplifies Data Handling
SX4000 uses four data channels to effectively allow maximum data throughput and handling of RAID striping versus other Ultra ATA host adapters or controllers. Drives can be moved around on each channel of the card without adversely affecting the array's performance or setup.

CRC Data Protection Support
For Ultra ATA drives, FastTrak SX4000 supports enhanced data protection called Cyclical Redundancy Checking to check data integrity at high speeds.

Onboard XOR Parity Calculation
Under RAID 5, SX4000 provides an onboard, hardware-based parity engine to optimize CPU processing for data handling which improves overall performance for servers and workstations, particularly under multiple user requests and saves.

Co-exists with Other Controllers
Like other Promise ATA RAID products, SX4000 co-exists with onboard IDE motherboard ports. This allows the user to use their Ultra ATA RAID storage subsystem separately from the boot drive (used particularly in audio/video applications) or simply add more IDE devices to the motherboard.

BIOS RAID Utility
The built-in FastBuild™ automenu allows quick and easy array creation and deletion.

Promise Array Management (PAM) Software
The bundled GUI locally and remotely monitors status of arrays under Windows, hard drives, and optional Promise SuperSwap hot swap enclosures via TCP/IP. PAM warns of drive failure in any array. Allows rebuild of arrays in case of drive replacement. Synchronization feature assures scheduled maintenance of fault tolerant arrays.

Operating System Support
SX4000 supports Windows XP/2000/NT; RedHat Linux 7.2/7.3; TurboLinux Server 6.5/7.0; SuSE Linux 7.3/8.0; and Caldera OpenLinux. 3.1/3.1.1.

Competitive Pricing
FastTrak SX4000 with low-cost Ultra ATA drives provides greater storage capacity, performance, and data protection than comparable SCSI solutions at a third the cost.

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