Mac Pro SATA card

Hello to all you fellow Mac pro users
Recently I ran into a problem while upgrading my macs hard drive space and it wound up taking the life of my logic board. What I actually believe happened is that the controller card and thus my mac cannot read from any of the SATA or optical drives, as I can still boot from an external firewire and the graphics card seems to be in okay shape. Since purchasing a brand new mac pro logic board can be a pricey endeavor and one which I cant afford at the moment a friend suggested I install a controller card in the mac pros available pci-e slots, then through some sata cables boot my system and run the hard drives off that.
Anyone know if this is possible? Could I potentially save my beloved mac pro by operating my internal hdd's on a pci-e controller card?
If this is possible does anyone know of compatible pci-e SATA cards for my OS 10.5 2007 2xDual-core Mac Pro?
Thank you all so much for your time!

Hi,
I think the odds of every port on the Mac Pro being defective is quite low.
This is what I would try:
1. Insert a spare hard disk into the Mac Pro.
2. Boot from the FireWire disk.
3. Clone the FireWire disk to the spare internal disk using the restore tab in Disk Utility with the erase destination box checked.
4. Boot off of the new cloned HD and verify if it is bootable.
You may also want to reset the PRAM and leave the computer unplugged for an hour if the tip above does not help.
If this does not work and your motherboard really does have all defective SATA ports a bootable PCIe card may be a possibility. However, you should know that most of these cards require the boot disk on the card to be cloned from an existing working system disk. You would need to clone from the FireWire disk to make the HD on the card bootable and you would need to verify that the Mac OS X Boot EFI BIOS is loaded on the controller.
Here are some Mac Pro bootable controllers:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/4322/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/areca/1680ix12/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/3522/
As you can see most of the bootable Mac Pro controllers are not inexpensive.
Happy Hunting!

Similar Messages

Is the Apple Mac Pro RAID card (v 2.0) compatible with the Mac Pro (v. 1.1)?

Hello,
Just wondering if any of you experts know if the Apple Mac Pro RAID card (v 2.0) is functional with the Mac Pro (v 1.1)?
I have an original Mac Pro and a new (black) Mac Pro RAID card. I would like to know if I can get any functionality.
I initially thought that the only difference was that the later RAID card did not have the same limitations on the HDs. I am aware that my original Mac Pro has a SATA II bus rather than a SATA III bus- but I am hoping this will not present any issues other than speed.
I am currently using Disk Utility for a striped software RAID (0) but would like to move to a parity hardware RAID (5); hence the purchase. If this isn't possible I'm not overly concerned as I managed to get hold of the RAID card for next to nothing so thought I would take the chance.
Any feedback would be appreciated as everything I've dug up online over the past few days has been a little inconclusive.
Julius.

The black-substrate card requires a 2009 or later model, and works only in slot 4, which has a special connector for it there.
The blue-substrate card requires the ipass cable and connector feature in the 2008 and older models.
These cards are both showing their age, and limit drive size to 2.2TB each. Their data-backup batteries have been extremely troublesome. You should probably look at other alternatives as well.
Mac Pro RAID Card: Identification and compatibility

Sleep or Shut Down with Mac Pro RAID Card?

I'll be gone for a four-day weekend trip, which is longer than the 72 hours claimed for the Mac Pro RAID Card battery. If I shut down and come back four days later, the battery will presumably be discharged. What will happen when I restart?
Asked another way ... is 72 hours the maximum amount of time that the computer should be shut down or do I simply restart and wait for the battery to recharge and the write caches to be re-enabled?
The FAQ for the Mac Pro RAID Card http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1346 talks around this issue, but doesn't say whether it is a good or bad idea to allow the battery to discharge for "... any length of time." Please review the appended excerpt from the FAQ and advise on whether I should sleep or shut down.
Regards,
iPhoton
Question: Why does RAID Utility show a yellow light and report the status "Write cache disabled"?
Answer: The write cache is disabled automatically so data cannot be written to RAID volumes when the battery charge is not sufficient to back up cached data for 72 hours. This message is normally encountered when a RAID Card is used for the first time, when the battery enters a conditioning cycle once every three months, or when a computer with a RAID Card installed is shut down for any length of time.
If your RAID card's firmware is M-2.0.3.3 or later, or E-1.2.2.4 or later, you can use RAID Utility to force-enable the write cache while the battery conditions itself. Warning: If you enable the write caches before the battery is fully charged, you might lose some data if the power to your computer is interrupted.

Thanks to everyone who replied to my message. I did a proper backup and normal shut down on Wednesday night and restarted on Monday morning. That was over 100 hours later and certainly more than the battery is specified (72 hours).
When I restarted on Monday morning I noticed ... no change! The battery was fully charged according to the RAID Utility, I received no warning messages, there were no new events in the RAID Utility log ... it's as if the extended shutdown never occurred.
So, an extended shutdown appears not to be a problem and I won't worry about it again, not even on my next extended shutdown for three weeks at the end of the year.
Regards,
iPhoton

Mac Pro airport card boot issues

I've taken an old airport card from a Mac Mini, and installed it in an Early 2009 Mac Pro.
The unit should be fully compatible, but when I boot, it just hangs at the 50% mark on the startup screen.
If I remove the card, the machine boots just fine.
Is there a firmware update I need to make to the system, to tell it about the new wireless card?

What makes yo think it is compatible? It seems not to be.
Also these do not list a Mini card being compatible with a Mac Pro desktop card
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Apple/AR5BXB112/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Apple/6615048K/

Mac Pro Graphics Cards

I am using an early Mac Pro 3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon with an NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT Graphics Card. I am thinking of upgrading my monitor to a 24" model with high resolution.
Can anyone give me advice on whether I need, or could benefit from, a new Graphics Card?
Any advice would be most appreciated.
YAGOM

The NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT graphics card has one dual-link DVI port that can handle a display up to 2560 x 1600, and one single-link DVI port that can handle up to 1920 x 1200, so unless you need more graphics speed, such as for games, you don't need a new graphics card.
Note: there is currently no way to use the new Apple 24" LED display with any Mac Pro graphics card.

Mac Pro video card in a PM G5 dual 2.0?????

Will the stock Mac Pro video card: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT, work in a PowerMac G5 Duallie 2.0 (mid 2004 model) with the pci-x slots? Thankx! And would a Cube G4 Rage 128 video card work in thePM G5? (I bought a G5 without a video card and I need to test it and find a cheap video card for it). Thx again!

No. It is PCI Express card anyway.
head over to OWC and look there www.macsales.com

Mac Pro RAID Card and Western Digital drives

I'm having huge troubles with these items.
I first installed four WD7500AYYS (Raid Edition) to build a RAID 5 and install Leopard on it. At this point, one of the drives was probably DOA and didn't show up in the bay. I then reinstalled the Seagate that shipped with the machine, then proceeded to create another enhanced JBOD raid with one of the WD drives. After a couple of seconds, RAID utility reported an error (disk about to fail and such). I then tried with another one. The process ended with a kernel panic after two hours, while RAID utility was still marking the drive for enhanced JBOD. That disk never show up again, in any bay.
At this point, I'm left with two WD drives. I can't get past the creation of a RAID set with them, no matter what. Either RAID utility reports an error, or it says the disk has been ejected, or it keeps create the RAID for hours... The later usually ends with a "force quit", or a force shutdown. During these attemps, the RAID card went missing once, then it appeared again on the following reboot. The RAID battery, which was fully charged at first, is now being "repaired" (charging ?).
I then ran AHT to see whether there was something wrong. No errors reported.
Because all four drives were Raid Edition, I thought this could be the root of the problems. So I bought a Caviar SE16 (WD5000AAKS). To no avail. It fails too, in the very same way. And now it no longer appears in any bay.
The last step I took was to remove the RAID card (connecting the iPass connector to the motherboard). Out of the five WD drives, only two RE2 (the two that still show up with the RAID card) do appear in disk utility. But disk utility never ends "writing the partition map" or "preparing for initialization".
By now, I end up with five WD drives that appear to be just dead, as if they were killed by the RAID card trying to RAID them. The only drive that works, with or without the RAID card, in any bay, is the Seagate. I didn't try to fiddle with it though (I'm reluctant to format it just to see whether I can create an enhanced JBOD raid with it).
So the question is, are Western Digital drives compatible with this RAID card ? If they do, then how a RAID card can kill them in such a way while keeping the Seagate alive ?
I'm lost in conjectures. I don't even know if/how I can bring all the WD drives back to life. I'm not sure the RAID card is faulty, I've already lost a lot of time and money, I'm not willing to buy yet another drive to see it fail too, and my Mac Pro is kind of useless as I don't want to spend time on installing/configuring everything I need on a drive that is bound to be replaced by a larger RAID 5 array.
Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

Someone yesterday or Friday, had a system with 4 x 1TB drives and Pro RAID, but in their case, it was determined later Saturday that drive bay #1 was not functioning.
Hopefully these fully retail drives, not OEMs, and I would think they are fine. They are what I would use (Sonnet Tempo only supports RE of the WD drives). Someone else, Danish?, had 3 out of 4 WD drives were DOA.
I've never had trouble buying over a dozen from OWC, so it does seem odd.
If you have SoftRAID 3.6.6 I would use that to zero the first and last 100 sectors, or you can begin to zero the whole drive and cancel at any time, just to check the health of the drive and that it can zero and not produce I/O errors.
There are two other methods for accessing and managing Mac Pro RAID, ARD and CLI
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306231
Originally, only Apple drives were supported. My understanding was that this changed. But the only article I found in KB dates back to Aug '07:
Question: What drives does Apple support with the Mac Pro RAID Card and the Xserve RAID Card?
Answer: +Only Apple drives are supported with the Mac Pro RAID Card and the Xserve RAID Card.+
My understanding that 3rd party retail drives such as WD RE2 750GB, Seagate, Hitachi were supported as well since the article was written - and I can't find where I read that, but sure that I did, as this was discussed in the past.
I'd like to find an official article. Even my friend Google was helpless

Leopard/Bootcamp/Mac pro RAID Card

The last two bullets in the "More Info" section of Apple's Mac Pro RAID card read as follows:
• The Mac Pro RAID Card is required when selecting 15,000-rpm SAS drives.
• The Mac Pro RAID Card supports Mac OS X only.
Five Apple tech reps have told me I can run Leopard on a striped array of three 300GB SAS drives and then, via Bootcamp, use the fourth independent 300GB SAS drive to run Windows XP. I ordered a $10,000 G5 tower on this premise and now, today, a sixth Apple tech rep tells me it cannot be done. Each time I've called, I get a somewhat different answer. Does anyone have actual experience with a G5 such as this? Is there a third party RAID card that will work? If necessary, I still have time to cancel my order. Why would Apple build a RAID card that is not compatible with a most important feature of Leopard--Bootcamp? I don't understand their philosophy. They seem to work at biting the hand that feeds them.

Kappy, thanks for taking time to try to answer my question. I'll state it more clearly.
At this moment I'm typing on a 3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon machine with four 500Gb drives. Three drives are configured as a RAID 0 Volume running Leopard. The fourth INDEPENDENT drive is partitioned via Bootcamp into two bootable volumes--one with Leopard and other with Windows XP Professional. For the new machine I would like to purchase, I never intend to run Windows from a RAID volume. My beef with Apple is that their high performance 15,000 rpm SCSI drives require their RAID card to function, whether it be in a RAID set or independently. Their interface to the motherboard is through the RAID card. Apple has not written Windows drivers for their RAID card. Consequently, if I intend to run Windows on their latest Mac Pro, I cannot install the high performance 15,000 rpm drives. I simply would like to configure the new machine the same as the one I have now, which is three drives combined in a RAID 0 array running Leopard, and the fourth drive remaining a stand alone for Bootcamp to partition into two bootable volumes--one with Leopard and one with Windows XP.
In summary, there is no way to use Apple's highest performance Mac Pro in a Windows environment. I think that's inconsiderate of Apple. I would like the performance of 15,000 rpm SCSI drives (RAID or not) but I also need Windows XP. I'm sure many others will face the same dilemma. Apple should give this matter a high priority and churn out the sorely needed drivers. So back to my original question--five Apple tech reps said I can configure the machine as described above and it will work fine--the sixth rep said there is no way it can work, because their card cannot run Windows. Who should I believe. I don't want to make a ten-thousand dollar mistake.
P.S. The configuration shown below is for the machine I hope to purchase, not the one I'm using now. This one is a 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon Mac Pro.

Mac Pro RAID Card - RAID 5 capacity with 4 drives

Greetings everyone,
last weekend, I installed a Mac Pro RAID card in my Mac Pro, gave it 4 Samsung 1TB disks to play with and set up a RAID 5 array on it. However, the capacity is less than what I would have expected (expected around 2.8TB and got 2.38TB).
After some searching on the Apple Support pages, I found this ...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306212
... support article stating that in a 4 column RAID 5, the capacity indeed could be less than expected due to "data placement and layout techiques".
Does anyone know the technical reason behind this? Any other RAID 5 I know, hardware or otherwise, does not have this quirk.
Is there any way to work around this? If not, are there any other, comparable RAID cards that get this right?
Thanks in advance,
-sai

Hi sairath;
With RAID 5 one of the drive is devoted to Parity so that the data can be restored in case of a drive failure. Hence you are only going to see the space for three of the drive so your results sound pretty normal.
Allan

Mac Pro + RAID Card = No Bootcamp?

I have a Mac Pro with a RAID card in it and 4 drives connected to the RAID card. As is pointed out in the Bootcamp manual, the RAID card won't work since Windows does not have drivers for it.
Being persistent, I figure I just add a 5th drive to the system. I did so using one of the ODD-Sata (Optical Dist Drive SATA) ports (the extra ports on the Motherboard), only to find out that Windows still does not see this drive.
Now, there are supposed to be 6 SATA ports on the motherboard, right? But I cannot locate any of the other ports, I only see the 2 ODD-SATA ports. Does anybody know if it is possible to hook my 5th drive up to one of the other SATA ports and so still get Bootcamp working?

I got the same cable from Newark. It was a bit of an adventure to get it installed, you need to take the plastic housing of the "fan assembly" out, which you can do after you remove the cover of the heat sink fans.... there is some info on the web on how to take apart your Mac Pro, just search for it.
The result is GREAT! I got some Sata female to female connectors at Newegg, which allows me to attach a long Sata cable to the short stubs of the Molex 3009 cable (that I got from Newark). I also got a power cable converter, old style to sata power plug.
After plugging in an empty Sata drive, copy your system onto that drive (or do a fresh install, whatever). Then you can boot from your new drive, not the RAID. Once you've done that, you can use bootcamp as it is supposed to work. Windows XP installed without a hitch. The partition with the copy of your main system is not a bad thing to have either, incase you mess up your main system. I don't think you could wipe it, since I think (but am not sure) that it is needed for booting. You could probably shrink it to something tiny if you like.
So, problem solved! Now I have the possibility of hooking up 4 more drives....

Upgrading a 2007 Mac Pro Video Card

So Steve Jobs said that the mac pros would offer greater expansion when they were reased a couple years back.
Its been 3 months since the Geforce 8800 GT has been 'available' on the 2008 mac pro and 3 months since it hasnt been available for the mac pros which jobs referred to as 'expandable.' I'm in need of a new monitor, and will be needing a better video card, I have a 2 x geforce 7300 overclocked setup for gaming in windows. This experience will be painful once I step up to 1920x1200 resolution some time SOON.
So I have a few questions:
1) How does the ATI 2600 XT perform compared to my setup? Is a single 2600 XT going to outperform my SLI setup?
2) Would a Crossfire 2600 XT outperform it?
3) Is the 3870x2 compatible with my computer? Can I at least boot into windows with it, but boot into OS X with my 7300 without physically removing the video card from the PCIe slot? I suppose a KVM switch would be needed unless I bought a dual input monitor?
4) Are there any video cards made for PC that will work in windows on my mac BUT still allowing me to boot into OS X without me having to remove the card out of the PCIe slot?
Thanks for all your responses in advance!
ps. funny how steve jobs got deals with EA to produce games for the mac os platform while doing nothing about offering a required component to play games at decent settings and framerates. this is going to be a failure guaranteed if apple doesnt do anything (or, at least acquire PROPER ported games)

You can find benchmarks for the ATI 2600GT at Bare Feats.
You cannot use a third-party card to boot OS X, but you can use any compatible video card for Windows as long as you install the Windows drivers. A third-party video card simply won't boot OS X because it does not have an EFI compatible ROM. It will, however, work fine for booting Windows.
ps. funny how steve jobs got deals with EA to produce games for the mac os platform while doing nothing about offering a required component to play games at decent settings and framerates. this is going to be a failure guaranteed if apple doesnt do anything (or, at least acquire PROPER ported games)
As the Discussions are not intended for complaints, you can omit comments like these in the future.

Which MAC Pro graphics card and how much RAM for FCE HD usage?

I plan on purchasing a MAC Pro afer MacWorld Expo next month. Any recommendations for a specific graphics card that would complement my usage of Final Cut Express HD 3.5?
Also, should I increase my RAM? I currently use 2 gb of RAM on my G4. Will I see greater productivity if I bump it up to 4gb of RAM on the MAC Pro or will 2gb suffice which I had planned to increase it to from the standard 1gb supplied?
PowerMAC G4 dual 1.42ghz Mac OS X (10.4.7) 2gb RAM, 3-LaCie FW800 external drives
PowerMAC G4 dual 1.42ghz Mac OS X (10.4.7) 2gb RAM, 3-LaCie FW800 external drives

Any of the graphics cards that Apple sells for the Mac Pro will be fine. Personally, I'd suggest choosing one with at least 128MB video RAM, 256MB would be better.
2GB RAM in your Mac Pro will be more than enough for general purpose video editing. Going to 4GB will give you more oomph for RealTime effects and somewhat for rendering but you won't see a big difference in regard to capturing or general editing in the timeline.

Expanding Mac Pro video card with (non-stock) GeForce 7300 GT?

OK, I've done some Googling and can't really find what I'm looking for, so I thought I would pose the question here as I continue to search around. Here's the situation:
I have a late 2007 Mac Pro with a GeForce 7300GT graphics card that has been working just fine
I wanted to add an additional card in order to output to a TV in my office, so I figured I'd just look for another 7300GT
Found one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/121062296751?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m149 7.l2649
Bought it, installed it. Nothing.
I feel like I should know this already, but does it really matter who the manufacturer is as long as the chipset is the 7300GT? Is there anything I can do to get this situation working or was I a little hasty in buying a card that I didn't fully understand?
Like I said, I'll keep searching around, but any help that anyone could provide would be much appreciated.

The card you have already has two ports on it, and can support two displays at once, according to Apple:
PCI Express graphics
NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB (single-link DVI and dual-link DVI)
To convert DVI to HDMI for a TV, all you should need is a DVI --> HDMI cable.
If you are going to buy a new card, the Apple-firmware 5770 (as hatter recommends) can replace your current 7300 card. Works in all models of mac Pro. Accelerated drivers in 10.6.5 and later.
• Only genuine Apple cards are guaranteed to show a picture at power on.
• PC cards flashed with Apple firmware may not show a picture until the login screen, making debugging difficult when your Mac will not boot right up.
• PC-only cards will not show a picture under Mac OS X.
• Note: [This may be changing with some advanced NVIDIA cards in to 600 and 700 series, but they are overkill for this application.]

I want to upgrade my Mac Pro video card. I am using a mac quad core 2.7 GHz 8 megs of ram and an ATI Radeon 3870. Where do I start?

I am using a mac pro with a 2.7 GHz processor 8 gigs of ram and a Radeon HD 3870 video card with 512 megs of vram.
I want to upgrade to 1 gig of vram if possible.
Can anyone tell me where I can begin looking, what brand to buy, and what options I have?
I want to be able to use the Element 3D plug in After Effects.
Also, would I need to upgrade my operating system?
Thanks,
Faucheux

Shop for them at the Apple Online Store. I would suggest the ATI 5770 or 5870 or one of the new Nvidia GTX models - 650 Ti, 660, or 680.
Note that unless your Mac Pro has PCIe 2.0 slots you should stick with the ATI 5770.

Quartz Extreme not showing up on stock Mac Pro and card

I have purchased a new Mac Pro and LED Cinema Display from the Apple store last month. Safari Top Sites is not working and the "help" stated I need Quartz Extreme. Looked in the profile, but it is not listed in the list on the right at all. It is a stock apple card and display.
Is my monitor video card not even capable of using this feature or do I need to reinstall the system or something??
Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro4,1
Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 3 GB
Processor Interconnect Speed: 4.8 GT/s
Boot ROM Version: MP41.0081.B04
SMC Version (system): 1.39f5
SMC Version (processor tray): 1.39f5
Serial Number (system): H09257EM4PC
Serial Number (processor tray): J592300*MFD <edited by host>
Hardware UUID: 9F9AAE54-0436-5584-87F4-B99AF0523B22
NVIDIA GeForce GT 120:
Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce GT 120
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
Slot: Slot-1
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 512 MB
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x0640
Revision ID: 0x00a1
ROM Revision: 3386
Displays:
Display Connector:
Status: No Display Connected
LED Cinema Display:
Resolution: 1920 x 1200
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off *<------------------------------ Quartz Extreme not even listed*
Online: Yes
Rotation: Supported
Connection Type: DisplayPort

With Snow Leo basically if you can't get quartz extreme you shouldn't be running 10.6.x
Easy way to tell if it is working though would be that your menu bar across the entire top of the screen is transparent, or if you add a widget to dashboard you will get the ripple effect. If you are on a system where Quartz Extreme is disabled you will not get those effects.

Mac Pro SATA card

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