ATA Raid (Adaptec 1200A) on Freebsd 6.0

[Demian]

Hello all,

I have just recently setup a RAID 1 system running FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE 
on an Adpatec 1200A card. Getting the system installed and working seems 
to have been the easy part. What I am trying to do now is find a simple 
and reliable way to monitor the array. So far I have tried to get 
raidutil. acccli, and hptraidconf (Highpoint software) working. The only 
thing that works is atacontrol. Here is what I have come to discover 
(please tell me if I'm wrong) ..

raidutil is for asr systems (I'm have ar0)
acccli is for aac systems (again, ar0)
hptraidconf requires the highpoint driver which I don't seem to need in 
6.0. However, the software does work with some minor tweaking of 
symlinks in /usr/lib.

So, here's my question. It is reasonable to setup a cron job to monitor 
the output of atacontrol status ar0 and if I see anything other than 
READY, send an alert? I would then use the cards bios to handle the 
rebuild of the array with the new drive.

The other option that I can think of is to load the Highpoint Rocketraid 
driver but I don't know if that's a good idea or not. I'm assuming the 
hptraidconf software will detach the controllers if I'm using their 
driver. However, all I did to get the system installed as to create the 
array using the cards bios and put the 6.0 disc in. The installer found 
ar0 and I installed to it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I've looked and looked all over 
google and the this mailing list but most posts are about different 
cards using asr.

Thanks much,
Demian

p.s. Here is some info that my prove useful

FreeBSD godzilla 6.0-RELEASE FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE #2: Wed Mar  8 21:40:38 
PST 2006     root at godzilla:/usr/src/sys/i386/compile/GODZILLA  i386

[root at godzilla] /usr/home/demian# dmesg | egrep 'HighPoint|ar0'
atapci1: <HighPoint HPT370 UDMA100 controller> port 
0xac00-0xac07,0xb000-0xb003,0xb400-0xb407,0xb800-0xb803,0xbc00-0xbcff 
irq 18 at device 9.0 on pci0
ar0: 58644MB <HighPoint v2 RocketRAID RAID1> status: READY
ar0: disk0 READY (master) using ad4 at ata2-master
ar0: disk1 READY (mirror) using ad6 at ata3-master

I have three drives connected to the 1200A. FreeBSD is installed on ad4 
and mirrored to ad6. ad5 is a stand alone drive.

[root at godzilla] /usr/home/demian# atacontrol status ar0
ar0: ATA RAID1 subdisks: ad4 ad6 status: READY

[root at godzilla] /usr/home/demian# atacontrol list
ATA channel 0:
    Master:      no device present
    Slave:       no device present
ATA channel 1:
    Master: acd0 <AOpen 12X DVD-ROM/ASH 01112001/R22>     Slave:       
no device present
ATA channel 2:
    Master:  ad4 <Maxtor 6Y060L0/YAR41VW0> ATA/ATAPI revision 7
    Slave:   ad5 <Maxtor 6Y160P0/YAR41BW0> ATA/ATAPI revision 7
ATA channel 3:
    Master:  ad6 <Maxtor 6Y060L0/YAR41VW0> ATA/ATAPI revision 7
    Slave:       no device present