This is a bit of information that cost me both time and money. I'd like to share it with my friends in the hope of saving them both. The bottom line is DON'T BUY ADAPTEC! Ever! Of course there's a story behind that statement so if you have the time, read on.
I have a large music database (56mb) that's difficult to back up. To insure the integrity of the data, I've always had it on a RAID array. I had previously been using the RAID array capabilities of Windows 2000 but I don't have a lot of trust for Microsoft and I wanted a more robust hardware solution. I found and purchased an Adaptec 1200a ATA RAID controller card. According to the box, this is a "Low Cost ATA/100 RAID card for data protection and increased performance" Sounds good. I knew from past dealings with them that Adaptec isn't a very consumer oriented company but I though their hardware was good.
I installed the card and tried to create a mirrored array from two 70gb IBM drives. There was data on the first drive so I chose the option to build the array by duplicating the data onto the second drive. It failed! Strangely, when I rebooted and went into the bios, it looked like the mirrored array was out there and that it was healthy. I knew it wasn't because there hadn't been enough time to duplicate the data onto the second drive.
I tried building the array again using the BIOS instead of the Windows program. Again it failed and again when I rebooted, it looked like the array was there and that it was healthy. I looked through the documentation for some clue as to how to verify the health of the array but couldn't find any. I searched their online knowledge base but couldn't find the answer there either.
Finally, I contacted technical support. The response I got back amazed me! Here's what they said;
The only way to be sure if indeed the array is fault tolerant is to
disconnect one of the 70gb hard drives and check in W2K that you still
have access to all the data as that will confirm if the array was
created successfully or not.
How's that for a response? The ONLY way to be sure if the array is fault tolerant is to take the computer apart, disconnect the drive, and then try to read the data on the remaining drive. Unless you do that, you don't know if your data is safe or not! I guess that means that if you create a mirrored array with their card, you'll know if it worked or not when one of the drives fail! Hmmm. That kinda sounds like their RAID card is LESS THAN USELESS! At least with the RAID option built into Windows you could run some tests to see if the data was ok. You can see from this that Adaptec is serious about data integrity - NOT!
I had chided them on their horrible documentation. To add insult to injury, the guy responded; "There is nothing wrong with the documentation that ships with this product and the instructions are quite clear." Well, I guess I'm just an idiot who can't understand clear instructions.
Needless to say, I'm returning the card. I've already sent my response to Adaptec along with a copy to their sales department. I don't expect them to do anything. Like I said previously, they're not a consumer oriented company. Still, I thought I should warn all my friends so that they can avoid the frustrations I've had.
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