HighPoint RocketRAID 3522 RAID card Crisis

Yesterday I installed a brand new HighPoint RocketRAID 3522 card in a 2008 MacPro3,1 running Mac OS X 10.5.8. Connected to this card is an Enhance Technology EnhanceBOX E4 MS containing 4 1TB Western Digital RE3 (WD1002FBYS-02A6B0; Revision 03.00C06 ) also brand new.
The HighPoint 3522 Storage Health Inspector shows all 4 disks with Status OK and 0 Bad Sectors. The Array was created after initializing all 4 disks and is now RAID 5 with 3.00 TB in Write Through mode with Block Size of 16k and Sector Size of 512BHPT and its status is Normal.
The Crisis is that I have lost access to the RAID twice in the past 24 hours. The first time I was copying files to the RAID and noticed that 20 directories disappeared. I ran DiskWarrior I received the following Error Message: Disk warrior can not rebuild the disk. Error 2351,-36. Please mount the preview and check your files.
I contacted Alsoft Tech Support and received the following Reply: There is a physical problem with this RAID. Likely, one of the hard drives is starting to physically fail. Run DiskWarrior again.
At the Report, click the Preview button and utilize the Preview function to copy your files to another hard drive.
I followed his instructions and copied the data back to a single 1TB drive.
Believing that the problem was just a fluke, I went into maintenance and deleted the Array. I reinitialized all 4 disks and created a new Array. Went into Disk Utility and created 1 Partition and formatted it Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Once this was done, I copied the data back to the RAID.
To ensure that everything was OK, I opened Disk Utility and ran Verify Disk with the resulting errors: "Invalid catalog record type. Volume Check failed. Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed."
I then ran DiskWarrior again and it shows up as "Unknown Disk". The only option I had was to rebuild the directory and on Step 6: Overlapped files detected: 4. Four hours later I came back to the MacPro and the system was frozen. I rebooted and restarted DiskWarrior and is once again 50% through Rebuilding Directory in Step 6: Overlapped files detected: 4.
Console messages from Diskwarrior, which has also been reported to Alsoft are:
com.apple.launchd[226] ([0x0-0x3d03d].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[641]) Exited: Terminated
[0x0-0x41041].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[653] DiskWarriorRebuildServer: Couldn't open 'rc' file, error '2'
[0x0-0x41041].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[653] DiskWarriorRebuildServer: Error 1 executing '/sbin/kextunload',
[0x0-0x41041].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[653] kextunload: unload kext /Applications/Utilities/DiskWarrior.app/Contents/MacOS/DiskWarriorPreview.kext failed
[0x0-0x41041].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[653] DiskWarrior App: Error resolving disk with VM pages. (-43)
[0x0-0x41041].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[653] DiskWarrior App: Time Machine (disk1s2) contains a Time Machine database
[0x0-0x41041].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[653] Wired PhysicalMemory = 928.28 MB
[0x0-0x41041].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[653] Active PhysicalMemory = 917.98 MB
[0x0-0x41041].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[653] Inactive PhysicalMemory = 127.85 MB
[0x0-0x41041].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[653] PhysicalMemory Used = 1.93 GB
[0x0-0x41041].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[653] Free Physical Memory = 12.06 GB
[0x0-0x43043].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[675] DiskWarriorRebuildServer: Couldn't open 'rc' file, error '2'
[0x0-0x43043].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[675] DiskWarriorRebuildServer: Error 1 executing '/sbin/kextunload',
[0x0-0x43043].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[675] kextunload: unload kext /Applications/Utilities/DiskWarrior.app/Contents/MacOS/DiskWarriorPreview.kext failed
[0x0-0x43043].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[675] DiskWarrior App: Error resolving disk with VM pages. (-43)
[0x0-0x43043].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[675] DiskWarrior App: Time Machine (disk1s2) contains a Time Machine database
[0x0-0x43043].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[675] DiskWarrior App: Unknown disk: 'disk5s2', sectors: 5859426224, size: 512, type: 'hfs'
[0x0-0x43043].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[675] Wired PhysicalMemory = 926.81 MB
[0x0-0x43043].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[675] Active PhysicalMemory = 890.04 MB
[0x0-0x43043].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[675] Inactive PhysicalMemory = 131.33 MB
[0x0-0x43043].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[675] PhysicalMemory Used = 1.9 GB
[0x0-0x43043].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[675] Free Physical Memory = 12.08 GB
[0x0-0x43043].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[675] DiskWarrior App: Rebuilding disk device: disk5s2
[0x0-0x43043].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[675] DiskWarrior App: disk5s2 Extents, Catalog and Attributes tree sizes total 230 MB.
[0x0-0x43043].com.alsoft.diskwarrior[675] DiskWarrior App: Attributes file is severely damaged.
I have a RAID that I can't access, uncertain about which piece of hardware is the culprit as I haven't found a smoking gun.
Thus, I need to ask for help from those with more knowledge and experience as to what recommended steps should I follow to ensure this issue gets resolved and I don't loose any further data.

I read your post with great interest, because a similar thing happened to me. My Enhance E8-MS RAID would just freeze, and double-clicking my drive icons would result in a blank window. I couldn't reboot without holding the Mac power button down. I eventually eliminated suspects and determined my 3522 was bad. That was just the beginning. The tech support people at Highpoint are morons. They asked for an RMA three times on three different days. They could only manage one correspondence per day. I sent in one for each request, after the third time, I sent 20 in to make sure they got it. I asked to speak to a human, and that request was ignored. Then they asked me for a copy of my invoice three times on three different days. They got 20 copies of that, too, just to keep them from asking again. They took another day to ask for my serial number. Finally, after TWO WEEKS of this lunacy, they issued me an RMA. Then, three days after they signed the Fedex receipt for my card, they shipped me a replacement. I'll be getting it the day after tomorrow.
I will have been without my HBA for three weeks.
Who can run a business dependent on a RAID with this poor level of service?
I would be ready to go ballistic if I hadn't had a friend with a spare 3522 that he loaned me. This proved that my card was bad, because when I put his card in, my problems vanished. So, Highpoint Tech Support was absolutely worthless at helping me diagnose my problem. I gave them all the info they needed on my first message to them. But, they had to jack me around for two weeks before they'd take any action.
I wish I could stop doing business with them for life, but curiously enough, they seem to make the most fully featured and easy to use HBA for the Mac, based on my cursory research into LSI, Adaptec, ATTO, and Areca.
But, based on our experience, yours and mine, it appears their quality control leaves a lot to be desired.
If my card goes bad again, I guess I'll just buy another one and have it shipped overnight, rather than wait another three weeks. Then, I'll have a spare. I don't trust their products, or their employees.
Clearly, I'm upset about this and venting. And, I don't have any advice for any would-be customers of HighPoint, other than "heads up." Until somebody else does a better job of supporting Mac, HPT may be a necessary evil.

Similar Messages

VIA K8T800 RAID and Highpoint RocketRAID 1540 PCI card

I've had this old HighPoint SATA RocketRAID 1540 PCI card sitting around for awhile now and I thought I would maybe use it to beef up my system. I am currently running a RAID striping array with a pair of WD 74GB Raptors via the K8T800 chipset (no pun intended) on my MSI K8T Master2-FAR workstation and a pair of 80GB Western Digital drives (separate partitions) that I currently use for storing raw data/projects that can be used to rebuild my system in the event of an OS crash (striping array is a bit more risky so I like having this around). My idea is that I would put the WD 80GB drives on a mirroring array and use them for data storage. The catch is that this coming week I am going to reformat and install a dual WinXP/SuSE boot partition on my Raptor striping array, and I will need to make sure that the mirror'd backup drive is accessible by both WinXP and Linux.
Has anyone out there ever tried anything remotely like this?
Thanks!

I assume this Highpoint has it's own RAID-BIOS?
If it does, you could be in trouble, the K8T-Master isn't very happy with controllers that use 2 instances of a controller.
I have tried to get a lot of SCSI Raid controllers working, but no luck, they are the same pricipe.
I tested:
Ami MegaRaid 1600 Elite, windows saw it, but wasn't useable.
Adaptec (forgot the model very old one), board refused to even boot.
IBM Raid (very old as well) would boot, drivers would not install.
Several other have seen the same problems, it has to do with the INT19 (software IRQ) where the controller needs to hook into.
(At least I came to that conclusion)
It doesn't hook into that, but the controller does show up, but can't use the RAID-Processor/BIOS for anything.
A normal SCSI controller like the Adaptec 2940 or such are no problem, but they only use 1 instance.
The difference between a RAID and Non raid controller is that the Non-Raid uses only 1 IRQ and Address, RAID (intelligent ones) use 2 IRQ's and 2 Addresses, and for some reason, the Mobo's BIOS doesn't want to hook both during boot.
In Windows the drivers will load, sometimes, but when you try to access it, Windows is not able to communicate with the Raid-CPU and all sorts of nast things happen, if you even get that far.

Workaround for Hardware Raid-Card and Bootcamp

I have ordered my new Mac Pro with the optional raid-card by Apple. Since there are no drivers for Windows XP or Vista available, harddrives attached to the card cannot be used for bootcamp to boot from. But it seems the Apple ships teh new Mac Pros with all drive bays connected to the raid-card. I was wondering if i could bypass the card by detaching one of the SATA-cables and plug it into the mainboard directly to use the first (or last) drive bay for a separate boot drive (WD velociraptor 300 GB) with a partition for Mac OSX 10.5 and Windows XP (each 150 GB) on this drive. I want use the rest of the harddrives attached to the RAID-card for a raid 0 under Mac OSX only. Windows XP will use an external storage case connected by Firewire 800.

Hi,
I believe the iPass cable connects all four hard disks with a single connector. This makes it difficult to remove one bay from the Apple Card. My experience is that you either use the card for all four bays or you disconnect the card and use the stock motherboard SATA interface.
I found using an external RAID box allows me to have all four internal hard disk bays available for boot disk or boot camp use. The external SeriTek/5PM provides my RAID. I can use the HighPoint RR2314 for a five disk RAID 5 configuration or the Sonnet Tempo E4P if I want a RAID created by Disk Utility. Using multiple SeriTek/5PM enclosures can increase the performance.
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/5pm/
http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata5pm.html
If you want even higher RAID performance and SAS compatibility and don't mind spending more $$$ the HighPoint RocketRAID 4322 RAID 5/6 Controller provides amazing performance with the Enhance RS16 JS SAS expander enclosure. The AMUG tests show this combination can provide RAID 6, sixteen disk average write performance of 696MB/sec. and 833MB/sec. read performance.
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/4322/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/enhance/rs16js/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/datoptic/rm16_ex8/
There are lots of RAID solutions available for the Mac Pro. However, I find the internal Apple RAID lack of Boot Camp support is too restrictive and higher performance is available from 3rd party solutions at a better performance to cost ratio.
Have fun!

Highpoint Rocketraid Driver seems to kill boot drives

I recently bough a new Rocketraid Quad raid card for my company's Mac Pro (2X 2.66 GHZ Quad Core Intel Xeon). The card installed, and the computer booted up fine. I didn't try connecting any drives to it.
I then ran the RR644M driver from the disk image "HPT-Quad-eSATA-mac-v100-100120.dmg". That took no time, but required a restart. On restart, the computer booted to the Lion login screen, the mouse was able to move the cursor, but I couldn't click on any users to get to the desktop. One more restart had the same thing.
Then on subsequent restarts I got a chime, but then only a permanent gray screen. After a couple of hours of troubleshooting I yanked the SSD that I had been booting off of. (BTW, holding down option or shift at reset didn't help). Once that boot drive (with the Rocketraid driver) was gone, it booted fine into another boot drive that was installed.
I set the SSD with the Rocketraid driver into a external cradle on another computer, and the drive did not show up on the desktop or in DIsk Utility / Disk Warrior. I contacted the manufacturer of the SSD, and they thought it had failed.
The SSD is a clone of a spinning drive that was still installed. So I tried booting to that one and running the same Rocketraid driver... and now it appears I'm getting exactly the same thing.
Is it ludacris that a small driver could compelely destroy a boot drive / hard drive? Any way to rescue these drives?

Hopefully someone from this posting can help me out.
I'm using a Sans Digital RAID tower TRM4-B on a mid 2012 Mac Pro running Mountain Lion 10.8 with 20gb of RAM and a Rocket RAID RR622. I built the RAID successfully using the web gui, and the RAID appears as a 4TB in the Mac Disk Utility, but it won't mount. And in disk utility you can click on the drive, but the mount and eject options are greyed out. Of course the web gui shows everything as ok. If it doesn't mount, how can I get access to it to begin saving to it. Also, even as a RAID should I be using it as a time machine?

CalDigit's RAID Card or Highpoint's RocketRaid 4322

hi Everyone,
Are we having fun now or what eh? Congrats to Apple on it's Nehalem MacPro release! While a test of our patience, the wait was a fine process full of joyous anticipation!
I'll be placing my order shortly, and have decided that the 8-core 2.93ghz with Radeon's 4870 is the one for me. My primary softwares, 3D CAD (Vectorworks) and a rendering program (Artlantis) that I use for making concept presentations, are processor intensive. Moving up from my long serving PowerMac G5 is going to be quite the thrill, but I need some help please. It's about hard drive controller cards...
Six months ago, after doing my due diligence in the RAID research department, the CalDigit RAID Card was the front runner. Now, having read recent reviews, it looks as though I should purchase Highpoint's RocketRaid 4322 card. Price-wise, the Caldigit's $100 less expensive plus there's a $100 rebate deal on 'til the end of April ( http://www.caldigit.com/news/CalDigitVRShippingPR.pdf ) making it actually $200 less than the 4322.
Not that money's no object, (far from it actually!) but, when it comes to this kind of decision, I don't let price hold too much weight. Quality pays and, in this case, what I want to purchase is the best hard drive controller card for my purposes and for this machine,
so...
Which card should I buy? Speed and stability/dependability are the primary goals.
Setup-wise, my plan, at this point, is to run WD Velociraptor 150GB drives in the first two bays. These two drives would be set on RAID 0. On this set, I will install the OS, all my applications, and a few primary data files. In the third and fourth drive bays, I will be installing two Velociraptor 300GB drives also set up as a two-drive RAID 0 set. On this set, I will keep all of my data files.
I think this will be a good way to go. I have three external drives that I use for backup and I occasionally burn discs of my data files (which I'll happily be able to do onto Blu-ray discs using the second optical drive bay's soon to be installed Blu-ray RW drive. Yummy!). Thanks to all the backup, and having an eDrive, I comfortable having everything on RAID 0. Running this G5 on a similar configuration has been fantastic. No problems and great, great speed, especially for this, a nearing five-year-old computer.
I'd appreciate everyone's thoughts here. Which RAID card will you buy or have you bought?
Oh, and just what's the difference between Highpoint's 4322 and their 4320? Reading through the specs at the Highpoint website was entirely unhelpful!
I look forward to hearing from you.
thanks in advance,
yours,
JimQ,
Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada

Maybe this is why Highpoint's two top cards are getting more light on them?
Hi,
From my view, using the Mac Pro internal bays with any 3rd party RAID card is a disaster waiting to happen. Anytime Apple makes a change in the hardware or the OS it can easily cause the card to no longer be able to be installed or work properly. In addition, it is possible that some System updates may not like to be installed on RAID boot volumes and I bet the new Snow Leopard version of Mac OS X will break most current 3rd party RAID drivers.
When the boot system is used with an internal 3rd party RAID driver the possibility of a problem occurring when integrating a Mac OS X update rises exponentially. Having the internal Mac Pro drive bays connected to the motherboard gives the user a fighting chance
The reason I was never excited about the CalDigit RAID card is that it uses a slow, entry level, Intel RAID processor. Even with 16 hard disks connected the card is limited to less than 500MB/sec. In addition, it does not support SAS. The slow processor keeps the performance down even though the HDs can provide much higher performance. A 16 channel card with a slow processor is like a sports car with a 4 cylinder 70 horse power engine. It just doesn't make sense to me.
In contrast, the HighPoint RR 4322 includes the high powered Intel IOP 348 1.2GHz (1200MHz) processor with embedded SAS functionality. This card provides two mini-SAS ports (8-channels) that can provide almost twice the performance with eight hard disks in RAID 0. Using RAID 0, AMUG recorded 801MB/sec write and 748MB/sec read performance with the RR 4322. With a RAID 5 configuration 665MB/sec. performance was recorded. With RAID 6, 580MB/sec. was available. The HighPoint RR 4322 provides amazing performance and SAS compatibility. If performance is important, there is no contest between these two cards.
You can read more on the RR 4322 here:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/4322/
The RR 4322 also supports SAS expanders. This allows the HighPoint card to support up to 128 disks with the use of SAS expanders. AMUG tested the Enhance RS16 JS SAS expander enclosure with the RR 4322 and was able to achieve amazing performance with 16 hard disks. Even RAID 6 provided performance as high as 746MB/sec. write and 894MB/sec. read.
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/enhance/rs16js/
Using an external RAID with the RR 4322 provides great performance when needed and the ability to turn the RAID off when not required. Being able to turn off the RAID when not needed saves energy and provides for longer RAID disk life.
If you do find a system conflict with a Mac OS X update it is much easier to boot up from that backup disk that was created before the update than if the RAID is the internal boot disk
The HighPoint RR 4320 is the internal version of the RR 4322. While it is a great deal at newegg for $329, I would always prefer the external version given a choice. Especially since it sounds like Apple may have altered the internal Mac Pro SATA bay connections.
Have fun!

Highpoint raid cards on Sept 08 MP

I need help from you pros on an issue:
I have Highpoint Rocketraid cards for Mac: 620 dual port external cards and a 644 Quad port external card. Both are connected to several hard drives. The hard drives all work as they are supposed to.
My problem is this:The 620 cards/drives connect to the localhost:7402 site which administers and monitors the drives. Works fine as far as i can see. However, the 644 card will not connect to the localhost site and so i do not have the monitor/administration functions for that card/drives. I am soon going to increase the number of drives on that card with a firmtek 5 bay esata enclosure and i will need those functions to insure the integrity of my new raid5, etc etc.
I have contacted Highpoint by phone/email several times and they are ignoring me as fast as they can. I do not know how to remedy the situation. I hope youall can help me. Please email me asap. i need to take care of this right away so i can establish a stable raid setup in the next day or 2. Thanks in advance for your help.
bob1001

For what it's worth, I went to HighPoint's Mac support page (http://www.hptmac.com/US/product.php?_index=57&viewtype=download) and downloaded the latest Snow Leopard drivers (Driver v1.11 and WebGUI v1.02, you need to install both). Now I can access http://localhost:7402 like I was able to back when I was using my G5. NOTE: the old link was https://localhost:7402, now there is no "s"
Hope this helps.

Does Yosemite support Highpoint RAID cards?

Mac Pro, late 2010 12-core Westmere model with 24GB RAM.
Just updated to Yosemite. Discoverd the Highpoint RocketRAID card is no longer recognized and peripherals using eSATA are not mounting.
I don't recall whether it stated a driver was installed on previous versions of OS X, however I do know that the RAID card was supported natively at that time and attempting to add drivers resulted in the card not being recognized.
I've tried restarting, using a few RAID management tools from the vendors of peripherals I have, and updating the driver manually, and none have worked. Any suggestions?
Does it matter that the RAID controller is listed on 3 lines in the System Info, or is this just a glitch?
The Vendor ID is 1103.

The model in my machine is the RocketRAID 644M. I've had no luck finding anything helpful online. From what I've seen this model should still be supported.
When I first installed the 644M, I tried to install drivers from the included disk and that prevented the card from working. The drivers are part of the system, if I recall correctly, so installing drivers ends up pointing the device to the wrong driver files.
I'm seeing this in the System Info Extensions pane:
HighPointRR:
Version: 4.3.3
Last Modified: 8/14/14, 6:39 PM
Bundle ID: com.highpoint-tech.kext.HighPointRR
Loaded: No
Get Info String: Version: 4.3.3, Copyright (c) 2014 HighPoint Technologies, Inc.
Obtained from: Identified Developer
Kind: Intel
Architectures: x86_64
64-Bit (Intel): Yes
Location: /Library/Extensions/HighPointRR.kext
Kext Version: 4.3.3
Loadable: Yes
Dependencies: Satisfied
Signed by: Developer ID Application: HighPoint Technologies, Inc (DX6G69M9N2), Developer ID Certification Authority, Apple Root CA
I'm going to try backing up this kext above and then deleting it and maybe that will solve the problem.
Thanks!

HighPoint RocketRaid 6GB/s eSATA not launching my RAID 0 drive

Hi there,
I have a Mac Pro 3,1 (2008) with 8 cores, 10GB RAM. In 2011, I bought the HighPoint RocketRaid 6GB/s eSATA for Mac RAID card (model number 644MLF I believe). It has 4 eSATA ports. The RAID 0 was initialized with four 1TB external hard drives (WD Caviar Black in Startech eSATA / USB enclosures). I'm running Lion operating system (whatever the latest 10.7.x).
Unfortunately the RAID management is software based and I was alwasy suspecious about that because Disk Utility doesn't do much with setting things up or manipulating, restoring, etc.
Anyway, I was running smoothly. One time I had a fail to launch after the computer accidentally went to sleep mode. I restarted it and after a few attempts it worked.
I wasn't happy with this kind of odd behaviour but I thought I would never let it sleep again. But about a month ago it happened again and whatever I did, I couldn't make it to launch my RAID drive. It makes that sharp continuous beep sound and the system becomes very unstable unless I turn off the drives or even take the RocketRAID card out of the system.
The problem is I had it for RAID 0 since I was working on whole bunch of uncompressed full HD footage and I needed to maximize the smooth image. I thought eventually I buy a 4 TB drive as a backup connect it to my Time Machine and it backs up the RAID 0 that way but 4TB drives are (were) not out when I did the setup and I was too optimistic running my assets without backup in this time period.
Anyway, long story short, I'm now stuck in a situation that I don't want to completely re-initialize my drives because most probably I will loose my content (anyone that knows this please comment). I went to Apple store, they tested the drives and said they are fine, and they can't do anything with the RocketRaid card since it is a third party hardware!!! So someone tells them why do you sell it then!!??
I tried to get a hold of HighPoint tech support but they don't answer any tech calls. I filled out a web based support form. I doubt they can give me direction by emails back and forth.
Anyone had that experience before? Did you manage solving the launch problem? How?
Thanks for your help.

buy some wd black 2TB drives for soare and backup, and even 3TB greens.
so you are using Apple DU software RAID and initialized with Lion is fine.
the drive enclosure is _______ ?
$140 http://www.softraid.com is a good product and feature set, can also take-over an Apple array. demo and manual, and email support at softraid.com they do respond in spades, and makes it worth buying if it sounds good.
HPT support is iffy, it has new 10.7.5 driver? or do you need to dual boot and get out your 10.6.8 system clone? and SL has no issues but 10.7.x on 2008/3, 1 doesin terms of power mgmt. you could try another lion clean install to test but some had to go back to 10.6.8.

3rd Party SATA raid cards for internal drives?

All --
Apart from the discussion as to if RAID actually benefits a home desktop system, I am wondering if anyone has the lowdown on using 3rd party SATA raid cards to support the INTERNAL hard drives on the Mac Pro series?
My Mac Pro is still slated to be built at Apple and for now I have the minimum memory and HD spec being requested at Apple, with the plan to upgrade the memory and drives from OWC or another vendor.
I've toyed with the idea of utilizing Disk Utility's software RAID features (e.g. RAID 0 for scratch disks, RAID 1 for boot, RAID 0+1 for all else.) I've also toyed with the notion of searching for a hardware raid solution which would allow me to transfer the internal SATA cable runs from the motherboard to a host adapter card for an internal multi-channel experience (with options to create and break mirrors to external devices for backup purposes.)
So....
Has anyone experience or utilized 3rd party hardware raid controllers which can connect to the internal HD bays? Are there limitations to this (ie, does the boot drive HAVE to reside off the internal motherboard controllers, or can an internal hardware controller successfully boot the system) of which ought be noted?
Finally, in the event that a host adapter card cannot drive the interna bays, can anyone give feedback to hardware SATA cards to power external drive bays with support for Disk Utility (to allow RAID1 pairings of internal drives to external snapshot-backup drives)?
Thanks for your time,
Ian Poulin
Richmond, Va

I am wondering if anyone has the lowdown on using 3rd party SATA raid cards to support the INTERNAL hard drives on the Mac Pro series?
There are many 3rd party controllers that support the internal HDs if an internal iPass connector is used. The problem is that some are bootable but most are not.
The Areca ARC-1680ix-12 and the HighPoint RocketRAID 4320 are bootable. However, the system cannot be installed via the Apple DVD. Instead the user needs to clone a boot drive with the proper drivers to the boot volume on the controller and then boot from the 3rd party controller.
The other issue I found is that these controllers do not support Boot Camp. If Boot Camp is desired, my recommendation would be to leave the internal HDs on the Mac Pro internal bus intact and use the 3rd party controller for external storage. This method provides four internal bays that are bootable, support Boot Camp and can be used for system backups. I use the 3rd party controller for external storage for large RAID sets and hot swapping hard disks.
With the internal bays intact and external hot swap RAID storage available the user can support Boot Camp, multiple system volumes and large external RAID sets. From my experience using a 3rd party controller with the internal HD bays always has some limitations. The user usually does not realize it unit later when Boot Camp does not work or the computer fails on a system upgrade or the controller does not work at all with a new version of Mac OS X.
Staying with the standard internal Mac Pro bay configuration will be the best configuration to avoid compatibility issues with future versions of Mac OS X. It is rumored that the new Snow Leopard may require 64-bit drivers. If that is the case, I would expect most if not all existing 3rd party controller drivers to fail. Some drivers will be upgraded after a few months while others may not. Having the internal Mac Pro SATA controller intact should at least allow the Mac Pro to boot if my guess about compatibility issues is correct.
can anyone give feedback to hardware SATA cards to power external drive bays with support for Disk Utility (to allow RAID1 pairings of internal drives to external snapshot-backup drives)?
There are a large number of external controllers that work with Disk Utility. Here are some of my favorites.
1. FirmTek SeriTek/2SE2-E and the SeriTek/5PM
http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata5pm2se2.html
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/5pm/
2. Sonnet Tempo E4P
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/sonnet/mac-pro/
3. DAT Optic eSATA_PCIe8
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/datoptic/pcie8/
Have fun!

H77MA-G43 with Highpoint Rocketraid 640 - Not posting

Hi All,
I recently brought a H77MA-G43 and built a system running VMware ESXi which runs fine. However when I try to add a Highpoint Rocketraid 640 which works on my main PC (Asus M/B) the system wont post. I've tried numerous variations of the Bios settings for the Highpoint card but cannot find anything on the H77MA-G43 bios which would get the card working.
I have put a HP P212 Raid card on the mainboard which works fine (except for VMdirectpath I/O (works but the VM's don't see the HP card properly, I can troubleshoot this myself)) but I really do need the Highpoint functioning for the additional SATA 6Gbs ports.
A previous bios (v1.3) included support for the Rocket 620X1 Gen2 card so I thought an update to the latest bios 1.4 would help but it did not.
Does anyone have any experience or ideas on troubleshooting this sort of problem or how I go about requesting this issue to be resolved or added to a future Bios?
Cheers,

Quote from: andryrus on 17-September-12, 19:40:26
Raximus
Hi,
I've got similar MB (Z77) and P212
but Raid is not working - i see the P212 initialization during boot and nowhere else - windows, linux, ESXi. (https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=161815.0)
Don't think this is a RAM or HDD problem...
What Cpu do you use?
Hi Andyrus,
I was planning to update this forum on my ESXi antics on my motherboard and good thing I did otherwise I would never had replied.
The CPU I have is a i5 3550, my HP P212 has a cache module but no BBWC. 16GB RAM installed (I'm at work so I cant check the brand).
http://ark.intel.com/products/65516/Intel-Core-i5-3550-Processor-6M-Cache-up-to-3_70-GHz
ESXi detects it under storage controllers and I could use it without issue. I always had arrays configured when booting, do you?
I would try the 'How To Contact MSI' link in this thread to contact MSI, they turned around a beta bios very quickly (be warned the English isn't great but they are helpful).
Raximus

Drives won't wake with HighPoint RocketRAID Quad eSATA 6Gb/s For Mac 644

Just setting up and configuring a new 2010 12 Core Mac Pro 2.93Ghz with a HighPoint RocketRAID Quad eSATA 6Gb/s For Mac 644, and I've run into a problem. Currently, I have four WD WD600 Velociraptor drives hooked up to the card, functioning as individual drives (haven't tried RAID as of yet). OS 10.6.4, and version 1.0 of the Highpoint software.
Anyway, the card seems to work well, but I'm having big problems when I put the computer to sleep. If it's only asleep for a short time, the drives hooked to the RocketRaid card will be there. If the sleep time is longer (a few hours or more), they will no longer be in the Finder. When I wake the computer, I do hear the drives hooked to the card spin up, but they're not there. I've tried powering the drive case on and off, and that does not bring them up. Also tried unplugging and re-plugging them, and that also does not work. Going into "more info" in About this Mac shows that the card is still there. The only way to get the drives back, though, is to restart the computer. This is a drag for me, because I use my system mainly with Logic Pro, and load huge banks of samples that take a long time to load.
This card is supposed to be able to go to sleep. I wonder why it won't. I've sent multiple support requests to Highpoint, with no response. I'd sure like to find an eSATA 4 port card that would sleep. Unfortunately, there aren't many eSATA 3.0 6Gb/s options on the market yet.
Any input, advice, suggestions would be welcome.

Sonnet E4P (I have one in old Mac Pro)
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/archives/feb10/022510.html#S26630
Unhappy with E4P
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=11163806#11163806
Sonnet does not endorse every drive with their products, harkens back to SCSI which some people assume a drive is a drive is a drive in spite of persistent problems, and, there have always been "bugs" in Apple's AHCI and drivers.
would suggest the FirmTek SeriTek/2ME4-E for the Apple Mac Pro. You can view its performance tables with various configurations here: http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-2me4-e/perform/
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=11163806#11163806
To quote FirmTek:
The ability to hot swap hard disks is typically a function of the eSATA controller driver. I found the Apple Built-in AHCI driver may not always support hot swap with all SATA enclosure types. If you find this is the case with your particular dock then a restart may be required.
The benefit of the built-in Apple AHCI driver is that it provides instant support for several SATA controllers. The downside to the AHCI driver is that it has limitations and may not work properly or at all with some configurations. In addition, if the AHCI driver does not work for you the company that sold the controller usually cannot correct the issue as the AHCI driver was not built by them.
To address these issues FirmTek designed a driver for the 6G based SeriTek/e6G that allows it to properly hot swap with direct connect and Oxford 936/946 based enclosures. In addition, the new FirmTek driver also supports port multiplier based enclosures like the SeriTek/5PM. A dedicated driver can provide extra features that may not be available with the AHCI driver.
A 4-port card for direct connect, a 2-port card for what? PM case? SSDs?
http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata2me4e.html
http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/satae6g.html
Another user was totally unhappy with the HP RR and was looking for ideas, I gave him a bunch, but never returned to follow up on their thread. So no idea or help there. I think CalDigit to drive 8/12-bay using mini-SAS interface.
edited

HELP!! HighPoint RocketRAID 4322

Hi guys,
I am purchasing a new system (Two 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon) and I would like to know if the HighPoint RocketRAID 4322...
1. is completely compatible with this system?
2. is capable of controlling 4 WD VelociRaptor 300GB (internal)?
3. what are the external ports? Appears to be 2x eSata and 1x ethernet, is this correct?
OR
Should I just get the Caldigit raid card to be sure to be sure
Thanks in advance,
ozmo

Not sure if you have found solution to your problem... but just in case...
Had a number of disappointments with the RR2322...
The biggest is the sleep issue... but it does seem to clear itself up with the EFI. I'm sure the BIOS works when a PC is sleeping, but on my mac it meant that the drives would disconnect when the machine came back to from sleep and had trouble accessing the WebGUI.
Why would they not mention the EFI - I have no idea. Having to go to the Chinese site to find the EFI for my card, no instructions, no documentation - its just useless. The US site and the Mac site does not list the EFI at all for my card model.
In any event, found it by mistake and updated to the 64bits and it seemed to have worked. I'm still not happy with the software support. The site and marketing material is all deceiving (and the documentation almost non-existant). The card supports SMART (but they don't say its web based only which is useless). The card supports hot-swap (for PC only). The card supports SMTP messages (as long as its not using authenticated SMTP - good luck in finding one unless you run your own server), the errors on the event list are useless.
Then I was going to try to address some of the short comings (which basically concentrates everything on the webgui, so no log on the console, no system SMART, no hot-swap etc) by using the CLI and creating my own scrips and command... well - HighPoint does offers CLI (Linux, BSD and Windows) but none for the Mac.
A very under-supported card... which I was very surprised as people seem to like them for OS X but no one talks about all the basic shortcomings and basic instructions to use these cards. I'm about to regret the purchase but I'll see if I can scrip some commands interacting with the web interface to make it work.
So, yes - install the EFI and that should at least help you a bit (I hope - it did me for at least one issue).
RM

Raid card problem, migration from Caldigit to.... What else?

Hey,
So long story short apple has decided to crew my 2008 mac pro for a new 2009! Which is pretty awesome, except for one small (big) problem. I have a 4 drive raid 5 array off of the Caldigit raid card... however the new system does not have an ipass cable, correct? Meaning I can't connect my raid card..
So here's my problem, I already dropped a bunch of money on this raid card, but I really need a raid 5 array for what I do, any suggestions?

So here's my problem, I already dropped a bunch of money on this raid card, but I really need a raid 5 array for what I do, any suggestions?
Hi,
I would recommend the HighPoint RocketRAID 4322, SeriTek/2eEN4 4-bay, hot swap enclosures and mini-SAS to eSATA cables. You can read more about this configuration here:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/intel/macpro-2009/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/4322/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/2eEN4/
http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata2een4.html
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000JQ51CM/arizomacinusergr
This external SATA solution supports RAID 5/6 and provides easy access to the hard disks. I like the external option best as it leaves the internal bays for boot camp, boot drives and backing up or importing data.
If you require an internal solution, and do not mind the limitations that come with it you may want to explore the new MaxUpgrades "SAS/SATA Backplane Attachment."
http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_i d=189
http://www.barefeats.com/hard120.html
Happy hunting!

RAID card or Disk Utility RAID - Need simple comparison please.

Folks, I am trying to make sense of the necessity or lack thereof for Apple's RAID card. Can someone provide a simple breakdown or comparison of the RAID card and/or loading the Mac Pro with drives and striping them using Disk Utility. I was under the impression that I could buy a Mac Pro, fill up the drive slots and just have Disk Utility set up the RAID. I'll be working with HD.
Enlighten me please

Can someone provide a simple breakdown or comparison of the RAID card and/or loading the Mac Pro with drives and striping them using Disk Utility.
Users that are working with uncompressed HD 1920x1080 10bit RGB video usually aim for storage speeds of 240MB/sec or more. Obtaining this level of performance across the RAID is the trick.
The Apple RAID 5 card can provide 306MB/sec. when configured as a striped RAID set, using four Seagate 250GB model 7200.10 internal hard drives with 16MB cache, when the volume is empty. By the time the striped RAID set reaches 80% full performance drops to 214MB/sec. A setup that can provide 240MB/sec. when the volume is 100% full will provide a more reliable configuration for 1080 uncompressed HD video processing.
Disk Utility can provide this same level of performance without the RAID 5 card.
So what is the advantage of the Apple RAID 5 card?
The redundancy of RAID 5 can add a layer of protection against the failure of a single hard drive. RAID 5 can be rebuilt whereas RAID 0 provides zero data protection. The problem with RAID 5 in a four drive setup is that one disk is required for storing parity data. This leaves the RAID 5 slower as only 3 disks can be used for performance. In a RAID 5 four drive setup the top speed available will usually be approximately 210MB/sec. and when full closer to 180MB/sec. As you can see RAID 5 adds some data protection but the price is lower performance. That is the feature that the Apple RAID 5 card offers combined with a bootable internal solution.
Do I need 240MB/sec. performance?
Users that are not working with uncompressed HD 1920x1080 10bit video may find slower RAID performance will work for them. HDV requires approx. 25MB/sec and DVCPRO HD needs 100MB/sec.
On the other hand, when I am working with large video files the faster the RAID, the easier it is to work with large files. So while I may not have dropped frames with slower DV formats I still
prefer to work with as fast of a RAID configuration as I can justify.
Other Options?
The Mac Pro has many superior performance options available for creating fast RAID volumes. My current favorite setup is the eight channel Areca ARC-1221x RAID 6 controller paired with an external Enhance E8-ML enclosure. You can see an AMUG review of it here:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/areca/1221x/
This setup provides a RAID 6 array with twice the redundancy of RAID 5. It also supports up to eight hard drives which significantly enhances performance. Using eight Seagate 320GB model 7200.10 hard drives in a RAID 6 configuration with the ARC-1221x provides over 430MB/sec. when empty and over 220MB/sec when 100% full. Up to two drives can fail and the RAID can still be rebuilt. The ARC-1221x is available to AMUG members for $680 until the end of the month here:
http://www.tekramonline.com/amugpromos.html
The Enhance E8-ML 8 bay enclosure is $595. Details are here:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/enhance/e8/
You will also need two external Mini-SAS to Infiniband cable model Ext-MS-1MSB. I got mine here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000FUOMO0/arizomacinusergr
So for $1340 you get an 8 bay RAID 6 setup that provides awesome performance, supports RAID levels 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10 or JBOD and can even be setup to boot the Mac Pro with any of these RAID configurations. I think this is a great setup.
More Options
If the user already has SATA PM enclosures and wants to add external RAID 5 capability for minimal cost, HighPoint has introduced the new RocketRAID 2314.
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/2314/
The HighPoint RocketRAID 2314 only costs $200 but it adds nice RAID 5 performance with SATA PM enclosures when using the new Mac version 2.11 driver. Using two SATA PM enclosures with 5 hard drives mounted in each enclosure for a total of 10 drives can provide RAID 5 performance of over 370MB/sec when empty and over 318MB/sec when 100% full. It doesn't offer RAID 6 or boot capability but this is very nice RAID 5 setup.
The card costs $180 on sale here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000NAXGIU/arizomacinusergr
Two quiet Sonnet 500P five bay enclosures will run $1000
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/sonnet/500p/
So for $1180 users have a high performance RAID 5 setup that supports up to ten SATA hard drives. The RAID 5 performance is twice as powerful as an internal four bay solution. Plus, this setup allows users to still utilize the Mac Pro internal bays for importing more data or for backup.
The Apple RAID 5 solution is a nice one. It just seems a little pricey compared to other faster solutions that are available. However, if Apple ever came out with a new RAID 6 card that used the internal 4 ports plus offered two external mini-SAS ports for a total of 12 drives, that would be a product totally worthy of a $1000 premium.
Happy hunting!

3rd Party RAID Card options - must make a decision

I've been on the Mac with NLE for high end corporate work since early 90's but only now moving from a 10 bit uncompressed SD edit suite to FCP and I need your valued feedback for a Mac Pro arriving soon. I've spent hours poring over all forums, Apple and otherwise, to select the right raid solution. The situation is that we will edit NTSC into 2009 and make the transition to HD later in the year. So, the initial set-up will be three 1 TB Seagate 7200.11's with a 320GB for O/S (and perhaps more in optical bay for scratch, etc.) I prefer to install the three video drives internally and go with a hardware driven card (Raid 5) that also provides support for external drives if we add later. Caldigit's is the only card that appears to cover all the misc. requirements but the forums list issues with 3rd party storage vs Caldigit's box. Other cards have pros and cons so I'm asking you to tell me what is working in your shop and also whether I should just purchase a 3rd party external enclosure and set up the Seagates there. If so, card recommendation is also critical.

Hi,
I find installing a RAID 5 inside the Mac Pro has too many limitations. I would rather keep the boot drive in its own internal bay and be able to mount a boot camp disk or other backup disks internally when needed.
A better solution for most users is to mount the RAID 5 externally. The FirmTek SeriTek/5PM enclosure and the HighPoint RocketRAID 2314 combination provides a high quality external RAID 5 solution that is quiet, fast and dependable. You can learn more about it here:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/5pm/
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-5pm/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/2314/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000NAXGIU/arizomacinusergr
There are other solutions that work well too. However, the controllers tend to be much more expensive. RAID 5 users looking for a quality solution at a very reasonable price will find the SeriTek/5PM and RR2314 combination works well.
If you don't mind paying more the Areca ARC-1680ix-12 SAS controller reviewed by AMUG is another high performance option that works well with SATA direct connect enclosures. You can read more about it here:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/areca/1680ix12/
Have fun!

HighPoint RocketRAID 3522 RAID card Crisis

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