ida(4)

ida4

Compaq intelligent drive array controllers

Usage

To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your kernel configuration file:

device scbus device ida

Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in loader.conf(5):

ida_load="YES"

Overview

The Compaq Intelligent Drive Array (IDA) technology is used to distribute data across an array of hard drives. It unites these hard drives into one or more high-performance logical drives. The drive array is managed by an array controller.

These controllers have the ability to provide fault tolerance for the connected drives and optionally provide write cache for the logical drives. It is also possible for an application to access the SCSI bus subsystem directly by using the pass-through interface.

Hardware

The following controllers are supported by the ida driver:

  • Compaq SMART Array 221

  • Compaq Integrated SMART Array Controller

  • Compaq SMART Array 4200

  • Compaq SMART Array 4250ES

  • Compaq SMART 3200 Controller

  • Compaq SMART 3100ES Controller

  • Compaq SMART-2/DH Controller

  • Compaq SMART-2/SL Controller

  • Compaq SMART-2/P Controller

Implementation notes

Extreme caution should be exercised when using the pass-through interface. It is possible to interfere with normal system I/O and cause hangs if pass-through is used to an active device. Pass-through should only be used to a device that is otherwise quiescent.

Releases

60 releases since FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE; the text changed 38 times.

  1. 4.8–4.11
  2. 5.0
  3. 5.1–5.2.1
  4. 5.3
  5. 5.4–5.5
  6. 6.0–6.1
  7. 6.2–6.3
  8. 6.4
  9. 7.0
  10. 7.1
  11. 7.2
  12. 7.3
  13. 7.4
  14. 8.0
  15. 8.1
  16. 8.2
  17. 8.3
  18. 8.4
  19. 9.0
  20. 9.1
  21. 9.2
  22. 9.3
  23. 10.0
  24. 10.1
  25. 10.2
  26. 10.3
  27. 10.4
  28. 11.0
  29. 11.1
  30. 11.2
  31. 11.3
  32. 11.4
  33. 12.0
  34. 12.1
  35. 12.2
  36. 12.3
  37. 12.4
  38. 13.0–13.2
  39. 13.3–16.0

Authors

The ida driver was written by Jonathan Lemon ⟨[email protected]⟩ and Matthew N. Dodd ⟨[email protected]⟩. This manual page was written by Tom Rhodes ⟨[email protected]⟩.

From base 16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79 in FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.