Mac Pro issue

[BernardLanguillier]

Dear all,

I spent some time installing Apple's hardware Raid card in my MAc Pro last night... and the result is a dead machine as of now. I am getting the blinking folder when booting, which indicates that the OS drive cannot be found/read.

- I have tried to swap the boot drive to another one with a bootable OSX image, and the problem is the same which makes me think that the drive itself probably is not the culprit
- I will spend more time on this tonight removing the card to check whether some damage was done during installation, or whether the issue is only present when the card is there. The installation of this card is a bit of a nightmare actually.

In the mean time, any idea what the problem could be?

Thanks.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Jack Flesher]

Dear all,

I spent some time installing Apple's hardware Raid card in my MAc Pro last night... and the result is a dead machine as of now. I am getting the blinking folder when booting, which indicates that the OS drive cannot be found/read.

- I have tried to swap the boot drive to another one with a bootable OSX image, and the problem is the same which makes me think that the drive itself probably is not the culprit
- I will spend more time on this tonight removing the card to check whether some damage was done during installation, or whether the issue is only present when the card is there. The installation of this card is a bit of a nightmare actually.

In the mean time, any idea what the problem could be?

Thanks.

Cheers,
Bernard

Sorry, it isn't clear by your post -- Did the RAID card work at any time originally, or never work?  If it did work, it sounds like the card failed. If it never worked, it sounds like it's not compatible...

[BernardLanguillier]

Sorry, it isn't clear by your post -- Did the RAID card work at any time originally, or never work?  If it did work, it sounds like the card failed. If it never worked, it sounds like it's not compatible...

Hello Jack,

Thanks for your answer. The card is new and has never worked.

It is an Apple piece of equipment and is supposed to be compatible with my first generation Mac Pro as well...

Cheers,
Bernard

[Jack Flesher]

Hello Jack,

Thanks for your answer. The card is new and has never worked.

It is an Apple piece of equipment and is supposed to be compatible with my first generation Mac Pro as well...

Cheers,
Bernard

Bernard,

I am not an expert on this, but here is what I recall being the case.  The basic, $700 Apple RAID card here: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MA849Z/B#overview, is as I understand it, for SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) drives only -- IOW it converts the current SATA2 bays to SAS compatible ports (they use the same connector as SATA), and then allows for RAID with SAS drives.  You can of course RAID SATA2 drives directly from Leopard without adding any cards.  

For SATA drives, I am pretty sure you need to buy the $1000 card which will work with SAS or SATA drives, and then you have to use either all SAS or all SATA.  Oh, and I am pretty sure any Mac Pro RAID card needs to be in slot 4, the top slot.  

Hope this helps point you in the right direction,

[BernardLanguillier]

Bernard,

I am not an expert on this, but here is what I recall being the case.  The basic, $700 Apple RAID card here: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MA849Z/B#overview, is as I understand it, for SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) drives only -- IOW it converts the current SATA2 bays to SAS compatible ports (they use the same connector as SATA), and then allows for RAID with SAS drives.  You can of course RAID SATA2 drives directly from Leopard without adding any cards.  

For SATA drives, I am pretty sure you need to buy the $1000 card which will work with SAS or SATA drives, and then you have to use either all SAS or all SATA.  Oh, and I am pretty sure any Mac Pro RAID card needs to be in slot 4, the top slot.  

Hope this helps point you in the right direction,

Jack,

I don't think that there are 2 raid cards, I am only seeing on in their store and it connects to the internal bays only that are SATA.

It was installed in slot 4 per the instructions.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Jack Flesher]

Jack,

I don't think that there are 2 raid cards, I am only seeing on in their store and it connects to the internal bays only that are SATA.

It was installed in slot 4 per the instructions.

Cheers,
Bernard

Hmmm... I thought I recalled a card that had 512MB of memory too, oh well.  

Stupid question, but is the battery for the card confirmed good and fully-charged?

[John.Murray]

hmmm - are you attempting to upgrade existing raid solution?  or just a single system drive?

[BernardLanguillier]

Hmmm... I thought I recalled a card that had 512MB of memory too, oh well.  

Stupid question, but is the battery for the card confirmed good and fully-charged?

Very good question in fact... the answer is no, but is that a problem? I would have expected the card to use live power when the MAc is on, is it not the case?

Thanks.

Cheers,
Bernard

[dandeliondigital]

Hi Bernard,
I can comment from experience with a MacPro with the RAID card installed. When I first got the computer the battery was dead or very low and I got a warning, but the computer did boot. Also, it will automatically condition the battery on it's own built in schedule. If something occurs to interrupt the process, it doesn't appear to like having a dead battery, but in my case the MacPro does continue working, but with less RAID functionality. The RAID Utility program will report an incident and it's up to the user to  be aware of and fix the fault.

I hope this helps.

It appears your card has a problem. Or maybe, if you are lucky try this:  pull out the card and reseat it in the slot. I have had numerous card initial failures that were caused by the cards not completely seating correctly. The second seating got the contacts right and they worked without fault.

So long for now, TOM

Very good question in fact... the answer is no, but is that a problem? I would have expected the card to use live power when the MAc is on, is it not the case?

[BernardLanguillier]

hmmm - are you attempting to upgrade existing raid solution?  or just a single system drive?

Joh,

I have 4 drives in the mac, one Velociraptor as boot, and 3 Raptors 150GB, out of which 2 are currnently in Raid0 with softraid.

The plan was to use hardware raid to use the 3 Raptors a a single Raid 0 drive.

Cheers,
Bernard

[BernardLanguillier]

Hi Bernard,
I can comment from experience with a MacPro with the RAID card installed. When I first got the computer the battery was dead or very low and I got a warning, but the computer did boot. Also, it will automatically condition the battery on it's own built in schedule. If something occurs to interrupt the process, it doesn't appear to like having a dead battery, but in my case the MacPro does continue working, but with less RAID functionality. The RAID Utility program will report an incident and it's up to the user to  be aware of and fix the fault.

I hope this helps.

It appears your card has a problem. Or maybe, if you are lucky try this:  pull out the card and reseat it in the slot. I have had numerous card initial failures that were caused by the cards not completely seating correctly. The second seating got the contacts right and they worked without fault.

Thanks a lot for the feedback. I'll try removing the card first to see if I didn't break something in the complex installation process, and will then re-try installing it once more.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Jack Flesher]

Bernard,

Just curious as to why you feel the need for the hardware RAID (card) when Leopard will perform what you outline above directly within the OS, and actually will do it very well?  IME, RAID arrays fail more often from peripheral hardware issues (like cards) than they do from bad drives...  Plus, the $700 you spent on the card will buy a lot of drives and RAM.

[BernardLanguillier]

Just curious as to why you feel the need for the hardware RAID (card) when Leopard will perform what you outline above directly within the OS, and actually will do it very well?  IME, RAID arrays fail more often from peripheral hardware issues (like cards) than they do from bad drives...  Plus, the $700 you spent on the card will buy a lot of drives and RAM.

Jack,

Valid question for sure. Only tests will show whether I was right or not, but my assumption was that scratch speed was the bottleneck in my system.

With software based raid I am not even close to the max theoretical speed of the disks, besides applications like C1 and APG are getting really good at using multi-cores and I would think that competition for CPU resources will further slow down software based RAID.

This led me to think that hardware based raid could have good value for me.

As far as using the cash for something else, I do already have 32GB in the machine, and some of the fastest disks around.

If I can get this damn thing to work we'll see whether I was right or not.

Cheers,
Bernard

[ddk]

Jack,

Valid question for sure. Only tests will show whether I was right or not, but my assumption was that scratch speed was the bottleneck in my system.

With software based raid I am not even close to the max theoretical speed of the disks, besides applications like C1 and APG are getting really good at using multi-cores and I would think that competition for CPU resources will further slow down software based RAID.

This led me to think that hardware based raid could have good value for me.

As far as using the cash for something else, I do already have 32GB in the machine, and some of the fastest disks around.

If I can get this damn thing to work we'll see whether I was right or not.

Cheers,
Bernard

Pull out the raid card and any other peripherals connected to your mac, including usb/fw/sata drives, hubs, printers, scanners, etc. and start from the beginning by reinstalling the card and adding peripherals one at a time. I've had the same issue before with other raid cards that either were not installed properly, its finicky, or it was conflicting with one of the external peripherals that I had connected to the computer.

[BernardLanguillier]

Pull out the raid card and any other peripherals connected to your mac, including usb/fw/sata drives, hubs, printers, scanners, etc. and start from the beginning by reinstalling the card and adding peripherals one at a time. I've had the same issue before with other raid cards that either were not installed properly, its finicky, or it was conflicting with one of the external peripherals that I had connected to the computer.

Thanks for the answer. That's the first thing I did... still KO...

The cable connecting the RAID card to the motherboard is very short and the fan unit puts additional strain on this cable when put back in place, and I suspect that it could be a contact problem there. I'll test some more tonight.

I'll restart by removing the RAID card to check whether the Mac is still working fine without it or not.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Jack Flesher]

With software based raid I am not even close to the max theoretical speed of the disks, besides applications like C1 and APG are getting really good at using multi-cores and I would think that competition for CPU resources will further slow down software based RAID.

This led me to think that hardware based raid could have good value for me.

I respect that view, and agree totally that drive throughput is your main bottleneck.  However keep in mind the RAID card has a throughput limitation too.  To wit, I have two friends who have removed their RAID cards and are now running the Leopard RAID and claim it is as fast or faster than their systems with the RAID cards were.  

FWIW, my OS is on a pair of Leopard RAID-0 drives mounted in the lower optical bay and I have the drives in the 4 main bays all running in RAID-0 via Leopard, thin outer 4x30G (120G total) scratch, the larger inner partition for storing working image files.  In benchmark tests my machine is a screamer.  

[BernardLanguillier]

I respect that view, and agree totally that drive throughput is your main bottleneck.  However keep in mind the RAID card has a throughput limitation too.  To wit, I have two friends who have removed their RAID cards and are now running the Leopard RAID and claim it is as fast or faster than their systems with the RAID cards were.

Interesting... for know I would just love to be able to test...

Cheers,
Bernard

[BernardLanguillier]

Thanks for the answer. That's the first thing I did... still KO...

The cable connecting the RAID card to the motherboard is very short and the fan unit puts additional strain on this cable when put back in place, and I suspect that it could be a contact problem there. I'll test some more tonight.

I'll restart by removing the RAID card to check whether the Mac is still working fine without it or not.

Good news: the Mac still works fine without RAID card,
Bad news: no way I can make this thing work with the RAID card...

I will need to speak with Apple in the coming days.

Cheers,
Bernard

[BernardLanguillier]

Dear all,

I spent some time installing Apple's hardware Raid card in my MAc Pro last night... and the result is a dead machine as of now. I am getting the blinking folder when booting, which indicates that the OS drive cannot be found/read.

Thank you for your help.

Problem solved, it was a bad connection between the card and the cable...

Still need to figure out whether there is some value or not.

Cheers,
Bernard

[Jack Flesher]

Still need to figure out whether there is some value or not.

Bernard,

I for one would be interested in hearing results between the same series of tests done via your hardware RAID and the exact same set-up done with Leopard's RAID...

Cheers,