RAID 5 on a Mac Pro

Before I begin, please go easy on me - I haven't been on a Mac in years (at least 10 but am so very happy to be back) and I am a RAID newbie. I do not have XServe, so I am not even sure if I am posting this in the correct forum, but again ask for leniency in light of my naivete.
I had a Mac RAID card installed by Apple and have since installed 3 new 1 Tb drives in addition to the 1 Tb drive that came with my system. I ran the Mac RAID utility to create RAID 5 and it did its thing. But I am not sure exactly what has happened. For one thing, my total RAID space is no where near the collected 4 Tbs HD space I have, it is something closer to 1.78 Tb. I knew I would lose some space in setting this up but is this normal or did the initialization not work properly?
In addition, the RAID utility operation took several hours to complete during which time I had assumed backup copies of my primary 1 Tb drive was generated. However, when I check my newly created RAID 5 under Devices, there is no content visible (unlike when I check the primary drive that shipped with my system - I can see all the contents of that drive without any problem). So was the initialization just a matter of formatting the new disks? If so, how do I get my data onto all drives? Is there software that came with my Mac that will allow me to do this or will I require software such as Retrospect to accomplish this? And finally, I noticed there are some nice tutorials available on the Apple website (such as for Aperture) but I could not find any wrt setting RAID 5. Is there such a tutorial available?
Thanks in advance for the help.
Regards,
Martin

Hello, Martin 095, and welcome (back) to the Apple boards,
This is actually not the right place for your question. The Xserve RAID is a (now discontinued) mass storage device.
There are a bunch or boards supporting the Mac Pro that I suggest you look into and if you can't find your answer post in whichever board you think is best: http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=194
That aside - if you just created a brand new RAID 5 it is probably sitting as a blank volume. Try opening Disk Utilities > Disk Utility and see if there is a large blank volume waiting for a format. It might be as simple as partitioning and formatting the volume. If this is it and you format it (probably HFS+ journaled) it will probably then appear on your desktop automatically.
Good luck,
=Tod

Similar Messages

RAID harddrives for Mac Pro 2009

Hello,
I'm planning to build a software RAID for a MacPro4.1 that offers me a quiet solution with reasonable performance. I would like to create a RAID 10 with four 2 or 3 TB drives.
I found the Western Digital Cavier Green 2 TB drives WD20EARS very tempting at first because of price and specs, but I read there are problems when using them in a Mac. It seems the problem is clicking, performance lags and final drive failures after a couple of hundret days. The specs page outline that these drives can be used for desktop RAID, but not for business critical RAID applications. So what does this mean? WD makes the 2 TB WD2003FYYS Raid Edition 4 drives with different features, but they are also 3 times more expensive.
If the WD20EARS drives are indeed a problem, how about the WD blue and black drives? Information from WD outlines that non of the desktop drives have the TLER features, which is necessary for RAID, among other things.
How about drives from other manufacturers like Seagate Samsung and Hitachi?
Thanks!

You want quiet, otherwise I would have said go for hardware RAID controller and external drives, and look at RAID6.
Software can't - though some have with very mixed results - used Disk Utility but the overhead of 10 isn't conducive. And not worth the risks and limitations.
If Apple implemented hardware motherboard RAID, yes, but when you get into 2TB size drives forget RAID3/5 and others.
Just have redundant sets and good backup strategy.
Keep the boot drive to OS-only (and apps of course)
There are, have to be, one or two controllers with internal drive support, but harder to do on Mac Pro with its wiring of cables and such.
WD RE are meant for hardware RAID. Black edition are fine for software based. And if you want a better RAID mousetrap, I'd invest in SoftRAID 4.0 even for stripe or mirror (and a much better feature set to help protect your drives and data).

Problems setting up RAID on a Mac Pro 2.1 using all 4 drive bays

Hi,
I'm trying to repurpose my Mac pro as a network storage device and have bought 4 x 3TB WD Red drives so I can use it as 6TB of storage that is mirrored. I'm running into several problems and could do with a bit of advice.
I have tried booting from the OSX Snow Leopard installer and running Disk Utility to setup the RAID 1 system, but every option I try ends up with an error message saying it failed because it was "Unable to find RAID"
If I actually go ahead and install the operating system it will allow me to use Disk Utility setup up the RAID systems on the drives, but only 3 of them as it won't allow me to use the boot disk.
Is it actually possible for me to create a setup where OSX is installed on a RAID system? Currently I'm trying to install OSX to an external drive so it will allow me to setup all 4 of the internal drives as a RAID system...and I was hoping once that is done I can install the operating system on an internal drive
I also tried partitioning one of the drives so that I could install OSX on that and use the rest of the storage for RAID, but the install kept failing.
Can anyone recommend any solutions for this? Currently it seems like my best option might be to permanently use a small external HD as the boot disk, leaving the 4 internal drives to function fully as a RAID system
I was hoping to set up 2 pairs of striped drives that are mirrored. I think this is RAID 10?
Any help greatly appreciated!
Thanks

A couple different ideas.
Install OS X somewhere else, then use CCC to clone to your array.
Don't use 1+0 type array.
Invest in SoftRAID and set up a 3-drive mirror - you have to shutdown to swap drives, but you can do a better mirror and faster rebuild plus it uses all drives in a mirror for reads so performance is enhanced.
People had mixed results and support using a 4-drive mixed mirror+stripe setups.
Apple's "Pro RAID" card has had I think poor support, limited to 2.2TB but could do RAID5.
Put the system on PCIe SSD blade XP941, bootable in Mac Pro 1,1 and above running 10.5.x and above; and then have a good clone and restore, and put all the data on your array - and I would still go for a simpler mirror-only with http://www.softraid.com

How to start a RAID 5 rebuild (Mac Pro Lion)?

Dear community,
does anyone know a solution for the following problem?
Mac Pro (2011) with hardware raid and four drives (2TB) configured as raid 5 raidset (named RS1). Raid controller lost connection to the drive in bay 3 but could reconnect after a couple of minutes. Raidset RS1 then reported as degraded in Raid Utility and drive in bay 3 as "roaming". It was no longer part of the raidset. Turned Mac Pro off, removed and re-inserted drive. After the next start the drive in bay 3 shows in Raid Utility with all green status (no longer roaming). Making the drive a spare drive via Raid Utility disconnects it for ten to twenty seconds, then it shows up again. No rebuild of raidset starting. According to past discussions I found here, the rebuild should start automatically. But what can you do if it does not?
Raidutil output as follows:
raidutil list raidsetinfo
                                     Total     Avail
Raidsets      Type       Drives       Size      Size Comments
RS1           RAID 5     1,2,4      5.23TB    0.00MB No tasks running
raidutil list driveinfo
Drives Raidset       Size      Flags
Bay #1 RS1             2.00TB   IsMemberOfRAIDSet:RS1 IsReliable
Bay #2 RS1             2.00TB   IsMemberOfRAIDSet:RS1 IsReliable
Bay #3 <none>          2.00TB   IsReliable IsNotAssigned
Bay #4 RS1             2.00TB   IsMemberOfRAIDSet:RS1 IsReliable
Kind regards,
Marc

Thanks for your reply. Do you have any idea how to re-initialize the drive? It now seems to be marked as spare(?) and any operations on it are rejected:
> sudo raidutil modify drive --removelocalspare -d 3 -r RS1
Modifying drives...   FAILED.
The drive is in use and is unable to be set unconfigured.
> sudo raidutil modify drive --removeglobalspare -d 3
Modifying drives...   FAILED.
The drive is in use and is unable to be set unconfigured.
> raidutil list status
Apple raidutil version: 1.3.0
General Status: Issues Found
        The volume [R4V1:RS1 [ID: 4]] is degraded.
        The volume [Vol-RS1:RS1 [ID: 4]] is degraded.
        Raidset (RS1) is degraded.
Battery Status: Charged
Controller #1: Hardware Version 2.00/Firmware E-1.3.2.0
                Write Cache enabled
Volume            Status            Type       Drives       Size Comments
R4V1              Is Viable         RAID 5     1,2,4      3.23TB Is Degraded
Vol-RS1           Is Viable         RAID 5     1,2,4      2.00TB Is Degraded
> raidutil list driveinfo
Drives Raidset       Size      Flags
Bay #1 RS1             2.00TB   IsMemberOfRAIDSet:RS1 IsReliable
Bay #2 RS1             2.00TB   IsMemberOfRAIDSet:RS1 IsReliable
Bay #3 <none>          2.00TB   IsReliable IsNotAssigned
Bay #4 RS1             2.00TB   IsMemberOfRAIDSet:RS1 IsReliable

MA849Z/B RAID card and Mac Pro 4,1 octocore

Hello,
is the Apple RAID card ref. MA849Z/B compatible with a Mac Pro octocore 4,1 (using Xeon 5500 if I am right) ref. MB535LL/A?

Hi-
The blue, Mac Pro RAID Card (MA849Z/B), is compatible with Mac Pro 3,1 and earlier.
The 2009 Mac Pro 4,1 uses the black, MB845Z/A card:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3514

Adding RAID 5 to Mac Pro - Will Bootcamp sill work?

Hi people,
I currently have a Mac Pro with 500GB HDD, and have ordered an additional 2 x 500GB drives.
I was wondering if I would still be able to run Boot Camp with a software based RAID 5 array that was set up in OS X - Would XP be able to address that RAID array, or would I need a partition on a non-RAID disk to make windows function.
I'm worried that windows will not be able to access a volume that was created in OS X, but I rely on XP being available on my workstation for certain applications. Would I be better off with a RAID-1 mirror for OS X, and use the third HDD for XP?
Thanks in advance for the advice.
Adam
Mac Pro 2.66, 2GB, 1.5TB -=- MacBook Pro 2.16, 1GB, 100GB Mac OS X (10.4.8)

OK - Many thakns for your help.
I've installed the drives, and setup a RAID-5 Configuration, as my system disk, and added a WD Raptor as a fourth disk, I was planning to use this as my windwos disk, but Bootcamp assistant tells me I can't
Oh well, looks like the PC is staying in the studio for a bit longer!
Thanks again,
Adam

RAID Setup on Mac Pro with OS X 10.5.2 Server Software

Hello All,
Have Mac Pro Tower 2.66 GHZ with Leopard Server OS X 10.5.2 installed, all software up to date, 2 GB RAM and 3 Hard Drives, 250 GB with System and Users, 2 by 500 GB I want to set-up in RAID 1 Configuration to mirror the 250 GB Start-up Drive.
Have set-up the RAID successfully using Disk Utility a number of times but it does not replicate.
Read that I cannot set-up the RAID when started from the 250 GB Start-up, so started from OS X Leopard Installer DVD and set-up the RAID using Disk Utility again, restart Server from 250 GB Drive, does not replicate, 500 GB RAID 1 Array still says 465 GB available.
What am I doing wrong?
Can someone post a step by step set-up for the RAID 1 Configuration I want to use please?

I you mirror the 250GB drive with one of the 500GB you will end up with a 250GB mirrored drive.
(You can't first mirror/RAID 1 the 2 500GB and expect the server to "understand" what to do?!)
You might better get another 250GB and mirror those two 250GB drives...
(And you can't partition a mirrored drive.)

How can I repair a RAID 0 on mac pro hard drives?

I recently RAID 0 my drives 2-4 in my mac pro. These were each 2TB Constellation Seagate drives. It worked fine for about 15 minutes and then as I was copying some files from this 6TB RAID -- it just disappeared.
It shows up in the disk utility but won't let me repair the RAID. When I do repair each of the drives -- slices, they show no problems. My OS is 10.6.8.
Thanks in advance for any thoughts.
bmwerman

how well did the act of loading data to the array go? how about building the array?
You're using RAID Utility or command raidutil
The problem likely - new and latest firmware? isn't the drives possibly (can't know for now) but with the controller and in this case I assume you are using Apple Pro RAID. How long have you had the controller? any history with it?

Raid cards for mac pro 2.66

i would like to set up a hardware card for my os as raid 0
(2 10,000 rpm hard drives)
and a hardware raid 1 for my data.(same/separate card ??)
are there any sudgestions on makes and models and compatability?
i am aware of the software raids provided by the os, i've heard they are not as reliable and fast as the harware solution, agree, disagree???

Yeah they say the software raid is good and I can't say first hand but I have heard good reports. In general I prefer hardware RAID but i setup server not clients so. Was using acard.com stuff for a bit but there offerings have gone down on the mac side. My current card of choice is Highpoint's Rocket RAID.
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/
Card works good and drivers all appear to be up-to-date with Intel based Mac's now. Nice web-GUI to the Raid controller. My only complaint could be OS related as opposed to driver but the Hot-Swap won't work right. In order for me to swap i need to drop the drives from the server and pull them. (alarms alarms, lol) Then put my swaps in. Seems the release call from the web-GUI does not kick the drive out right or the Mac OS won't let go of them even after un-mounting.

Creating a simple RAID in 2009 Mac Pro

I will be getting a second 1TB HDD soon and want to create a RAID set with the 1TB HDD I already have. I am confused on which choice to make - mirrored, striped, or concantinated.
Also, will making the RAID set destroy the data already stored on the 1TB HDD?

If your 2nd drive isn't the same exact model, it may not work properly, same cache, same "DNA."
And if you don't know how or what to expect, check Help in Disk Utility for one, and yes it requires destroying and then creating an array.
It can work just fine, the more practice and experience the better, obviously.
Again, what do you hope to gain or achieve? speed? redundancy? running live audio editing or a server that needs 24/7 and can't be down for the 30 minutes it takes to restore a backup? Apple mirror is also slow rebuilding and in my estimate, can be fragile. Also, people never seem to consider 3-drive mirroring which is much more secure.
There are dozens of FAQs and articles on RAID, even on using RAID with Mac OS X.
A great way to start is just with a photoshop scratch array (RAID0).

Setting up raid 1 on mac pro

i've followed these instructions:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=DiskUtility/10.5/en/duh1013.html
but in step 6 create, the create button is greayed out.. any hints on what im doing wrong???
for beta i have 3 drives
drive one, 250g os and apps
drive two, 750 gig with all my content
drive three is to be the mirrored drive of drive two, 750g too.
thxs.

Hi dcginc;
If your plan is to use the RAID 1 or mirrored array as a backup solution, it will not work.
RAID 1 is only protection from disk failure not backup.
In fact any data on a RAID array either 0 or 1 should be backed up.
Let us say you have an application running that has 12 files open. The application aborted and takes the file with as it goes down. You have now lost the 12 files, how can you recover?
With RAID 1 you can't because as the application goes down it will take the files off of both disk!
Hence the need to backup the data on RAID 1.
Allan

Mac Pro compatibility with Xserve Raid

Are the two compatible? In other words, can I connect an Xserve Raid to my Mac Pro (asuming that I have a Fiber Chanel card)?
If above answer is yes, asume that the Mac Pro is connected to a WLAN at home via Ethernet or airport. This WLAN also hosts one more computer (PC). Will this PC have access to the Xserve raid data?
Finally (and asuming that cost is not a big issue-I know how much the Raid solution costs, even at minimum config), Do you think that the Xserve Raid solution (with the minimum configuration) is better/more reliable/faster/ than the Mac Pro internal solution? Take into consideration that I am a photographer (shooting digital and raw format ONLY) and I consume about 50-60Gb of disk space per month
Mac Pro 2.66 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

You might want to look at what some other photographers use, Port Multiplier controller and drive enclosures. Up to 5 drives per channel for a total of 20 drives.
XRAID would offer FC and more levels of RAID support, and concurrent access, especially with Xsan.
Take a look at the AMUG reviews:
Mac Pro 2GHz 2GB WD Raptor/ RE 320/160 Mac OS X (10.4.8) APC RS1500

Apple RAID card Mac Pro adding capacity

Greetings
Do any of you know how to incorporate an additional HD into a RAID 5 setup on a Mac Pro?
I have a Mac Pro running 10.5.6 Server, RAID 5 composed of 3 1TB drives. I would like to add a 4th drive. Can I? I installed the drive in the bay, and created a spare using RAID Utility. I would now like to know if I can bring it into my existing RAID. Having a spare is nice, but I really want to get more space for storage.
-n

Sounds good. Here is a related question. I have this RAID card in my home office. I do IT work, so a while back, I wanted to get a RAID card when I bought my machine so that I could play with it and get a grip on it before I rolled it out to clients.
My electric bill seems to be enormously out of proportion, and I am suspecting that it is my Mac Pro. I never turn it off, and sleep is not supported with the RAID card.
The question is, how much power consumption are we talking about in practical terms with this card. There are 4 drives in RAID 5. I am thinking that the Mac Pro is going to have to lose the RAID card to save my utility bill. Anybody have a link to the white paper for the RAID card and Mac Pro?

Xserve RAID will not mount to my Mac Pro

We just moved the Xserve Raid to another Mac Pro with 2x3 GHz Quad-Core and 16 GB of Ram. I installed the Xserve card, plugged the cables into the tower and into the Xserve, powered it on, installed the updated Raid Admin, but it wont mount. I checked disk utility and I dont see it there either. The lights on each drive are an amber color so I know something is not right. I wanted to find out what step am I missing, if I am missing some software, if pulling the drives out before moving it caused a problem, or any other suggestions. Any help would be greatly appreciative. Thanks!

If you're not worried about the contents of the drives that a good start because I don't think that's recoverable. What does RAID Admin say about all the other components? Are the controllers green? Technically the yellow lights on the drive are supposed to signal drive issues but I don't know why all the drives would suddenly be an issue without a deeper issue.
Fire up RAID Admin and see what's going on - you're going to need it to delete and try and recreate RAIDs anyway.
Good luck,
=Tod

Mac Pro + XServer RAID + FCP2 + Configuration

Hello all. This is my first post here.
I will soon buy a MacPro por video editing on Final Cut Pro 2 and I was wondering if you could help sort out if the configuration I've chosen is the best.
I'll show you the configurations I thought first:
*Mac Pro*
- Two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
- 4GB (4 x 1GB)
- Mac Pro RAID Card
- 2 x 500gb HDD
- ATI Radeon X1900 XT
- 20" Apple Cinema Display + 23" Apple Cinema HD Display
- Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCIe
*XServer RAID*
- 2000GB ADM (4x500GB Ultra ATA)
- Cache Battery Back-up Modules
- Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCIe
My idea:
A) The MAC Pro I'll be used for 3D rendering and video editing. I'll configure the 2x500GB with RAID1 (mirroring) for a fail safe env, leaving my with 500GB of available space
B) XServer RAID will be connected directly to the Mac Pro (for now) via the fiber optic cards and we'll provided additional storage.
C) For projects stored on the XServer RAID (videos for example) I must be able to access and edit directly with FCP2 without having to pass it to the Mac Pro
D) I was thinking of using RAID5 for XServer RAID configuration leaving me with 2.64 x 500GB (as described on support faqs) = 1.3 TB of disk space with a reasonable fail safe environment (RAID5 with 3 drives allows one drive to fail and offers a good recovery rate).
OK. My questions:
1) Is my MacPro config enough for FCP2 + 3D Rendering ?
2) Can I use the XServer RAID directly with Mac Pro or do I need aditional software / hardware?
3) Can I connect the fiber optic from one board to the other without using the router? (on google the answers I found were very vague...)
4) Is the RAID5 the best choice (in terms of performance vs data recovery) for video editing. The RAID5 specs states that random writes to disk are slower that other RAID configs. Is RAID 50 (5+0) a better choice?
5) I opted for the 4 HDD config on XServer but I could change to a 7 HDD config for a similar total space.
I'm sorry for the long post, but I can't find anywhere suitable information about this questions.
Hope to hear from you.
Thanks in advance!

We have a ton of Xserve's and Xserve RAID's at my work. As of right now they're all directly connected to our servers with Fibre Channel cables (NOT fiber optic, totally different animal.) We finally just bought our first Fibre Channel switch to hookup five 10.5TB RAIDS and a huge tape loader for backups. The RAID's work perfectly when directly connected and are very fast. The only reason that you would need a Fibre Channel switch is if you want multiple machines to be able to access the array without using network shares.
I really don't think that just four drives will give you the performance that you're looking for. In order to get good performance out of a RAID5 you NEED as many spindles as you can get. If you're stuck to a budget if would probably go to smaller drives but get more of them. I think you've already discovered this but if you want to do a RAID5+0, you'll need to populate drives on both sides of the RAID as they are physically seperated.
As far as I know, you can only get Xserve RAID Drive Modules from Apple as they do some pretty intensive testing on every drive before they ship. You can't even buy empty modules, you can buy blanks but they don't include the required electronics.

MobileSTOR MS2UT + esata + USB + mac pro = never-ending problems

Hey gang,
I seemed to have entered a perfect storm here:
I had purchased the *MobileSTOR MS2UT 2 Bay SATA to eSATA/USB 2.0 RAID 0/1* Enclosure initially for a *dual 800 quicksilver G4* mac that I had, looking for a hardware-based Raid solution for back ups and to not burden the G4 processor. I have replaced the G4 with an early *2008 2.8 dual quad core mac pro*. After two machines and two different PCI sata cards, I've had no luck....
(website for the above enclosure)
http://www.sansdigital.com/mobilestor/ms2ut.html
For starters, in the G4, I had a quality Seritek/1ve2+2 controller that had no problem with two other single drive enclosures, but failed with the MS2UT.
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-1ve2plus2/
A glib response from Seritek support says that I should use their enclosure. Digging around I find that I need a controller card that can handle a port multiplier enclosure rather than just any serial ata enclosure. Seems silly to me that the user has to dig for this. I mean the USB & FIREWIRE interfaces don't seem to care: it says USB/FIREWIRE on the effing box of both the controller and on the drive, badda-bing, badda boom: it works. Whats with this high maintenance of esata. Well you get roughly 2-3x the performance so Ok, maybe its worth it.
Well, with the macpro on the horizon,, I give up on the G4, close that unsolved mystery. For the mac pro I figure PCIe, a modern computer, no problem. I get the computer, fish around the internet for an esata PCIe card, then I come across this review of the WiebeTech SilverSATA II which appears to be similar to that of the MobileSTOR:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/wiebetech/silver2/
It appears that the unit has specific tastes as far as having the right card to make it bootable, multiport aware, etc... (the Sonnet Tempo 4+4 card works but its a PCIx card, not PCIe)
Like I said: install a bootable Mac OS on any USB/firewire drive, plug it into any card, and it works... estata... its russian roulette...
Ok so I round up some vendors, (firmtek, sonnet, Highpoint) send them emails to see what they think: if their latest cards will work with the MS2UT... They are all over the place.. they think it may work, they dunno... it should work, they haven't tested it... then they try to push their own enclosure hardware on me. I mean see an astrologist or have your palm read.. it seems more likely you'll get a more accurate answer from them, rather than vendors... props to Sonnet, though, they list compatibility right on the page with their controller.
then 10.6 comes out... and you email vendors about compatibility on that OS, and they don't even email you back.
So I find this review of the highpoint rocket raid for the mac on the great sight: Barefeats.com
http://www.barefeats.com/hard119.html
to make a long story short:
+KEY FEATURES of the "eSATA for Mac"+
+1. Dual eSATA ports+
+2. 32 and 64-bit EFI onboard+
+3. Able to boot Mac OS X+
+4. Plug and Play for (Oxford and Silicon Image chipset) external storage+
enclosures
+5. 4x PCIe rating+
+6. Support for Direct Attached and Port Multiplied enclosures+
+7. RAID 0, 1, 5, and JBOD support using browser-based manager+
+8. Native support for Snow Leopard+
+9. Compatible with 2006 - 2009 Mac Pro+
I should be set, right? WRONG!
I email highpoint, detailing that I planned to mix both Port multiplied (PM) and direct access (DA) enclosures on the same card at the same time. They say maybe (only describing the PM enclosure, not even mentioning the DA enclosure compatibility as I specified), since its a raid card and I intended to use it with an enclosure with its own raid hardware, however they say they see no issues. Well it shows they don't even know their own hardware: Their docks say that the card supports PM enclosures as well as DA (direct access) enclosures. Their web based software even shows the two as separate categories. What is buried in the manual and not cleared up by tech support or their product page is that YOU CAN'T MIX PM AND DA ENCLOSURES ON THE CARD AT THE SAME TIME!!! I explained more in the paragraph above than any tech support from any company. Unbelievable where support has gone these days.
I discover the above because I found the card at Fry's believe it not and since they have a generous return policy I tried it out and learned the above the hard way. No dice on the MS2UT with what is perhaps the most forgiving esata card for the mac.
So more hunting on the web, this time the enclosure's manufacture site: sans digital.
http://www.sansdigital.com/mobilestor/ms2ut.html
...clicking on the accessories tab I find several esata adapter cards... funny that they include ones that don't appear to support PM enclosures... Anyway, I study two that state they supports port multipliers:
http://www.sansdigital.com/adapters/ha-san-4espcix2.html:
http://www.sansdigital.com/adapters/ha-dat-4espcie.html
Ok, I may not get a bootable enclosure.. I just want to get this thing working in esata since cloning my internal raid on the mac pro takes 8 hours using usb, and my main purpose is to maintain a clone so I make my compromise.
I should be set, right? WRONG!
reading the fine print on both cards it says:
*(Please note that the host adapter card is based on Silicon Image chipset, which currently only support up to MAC OS 10.5.1 by Silicon Image.)*
I do more research, it seems any manufacturer using chips by Silicon Image will have an issue with 10.6 macs! On some websites it says Silicon Image will never release a driver. On firmtek it says they make their own driver and swears that it works. At the Silicon Image website they say they are an OEM provider so don't bother them, and that its up to the vendor to make a compatible driver. Sheesh!!
I don't get it.. whats the point in having an esata sticker if it appears to come in more flavors than an ice cream shop!
Oh and it gets better: I go to the sonnet site, thinking they have to have something that works, looking at their latest tempo SATA E4P:
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/temposatae4p.html
well, the fine print is EXHAUSTIVE, but again props to Sonnet for making it crystal clear:
(4) Sonnet Tempo cards are compatible with most external SATA storage. However, external hard drives with USB 2.0/eSATA dual interface based on the Oxford Semiconductor OXU931DS storage controller chip may not be compatible with Mac OS X when connected via SATA. Known issues are kernel panics occurring when the drive is connected, or the drive not being recognized by the operating system.
+Summary of external SATA storage+
+• Storage with eSATA alone +
Compatible
+• Storage with triple interfaces +
Compatible
+• Storage with eSATA plus Firewire 400 and/or 800 +
Compatible
+• Storage with port multiplier support (multiple drives) +
Compatible
+• Storage with RAID 0, 1, or 5 (multiple drives) +
Compatible
+• Storage with eSATA plus USB (based on JMicron 20366) +
Compatible
+ these compatible drives include, but are not limited to:+
+- OWC Mercury On-the-Go USB 2.0/eSATA 2.5" portable+
+• Storage with eSATA plus USB (based on Oxford OXU931DS) +
+not compatible+
+ these incompatible drives include, but are not limited to:+
+- Western Digital My Book™ Premium ES Edition™+
+- Seagate Technology FreeAgent™ Pro+
+Advanced users note that this card is not yet compatible in full 64-bit boot. Snow Leopard default boots in 32-bit mode, except in an Xserve.+
So in short: if you have an enclosure that has both USB and esata, but does not use the JMicron 20366, then it will not be recognized by the card. If you have an enclosure with three interfaes: USB, FW and esata, you're fine. Keep in mind too: most manufacturers don't put the source manufacturer of their chipsets on the box. So I ask..
*HOW IS THE CONSUMER SUPPOSED TO KNOW!*
I swear, a perfect analogy is if I go to best buy, buy a toshiba DVD player only to discover it doesn't play DVD's that contain movies produced by Sony Pictures..because its not a a Sony/columbia House movie. You think consumers would put up with that crap? UNBELIEVABLE...
So now I have this really versatile enclosure that apparently can't run on Mac 10.6 with ANY esata controller for the mac. I really like the design of the enclosure, with its hardware based raid that is hot swappable and has a small footprint. However there seems to be no way to get a controller card for this device that will work on a 10.6 mac.
I guess whats inferred is that you should get an enclosure with the fewest variety of ports, i.e. esata/fw/usb... ironically if it has all three, you are ok, but not if it has usb/esata. Being that USB is the most popular, thats not easy. I'm looking to contact Sans Digital to see if they will exchange it for me, possible for a model with esata/fw800 or an esata only model, if it exists. My last resort is to just use it as a USB drive (my intention was to use it as a clone of my system, with the added security that the enclosure makes a copy of a copy in raid 1), however its like 3x as time consuming than esata.
If anyone has a working MobileSTOR MS2UT/wiebetech SilverSATA II in a 10.5 mac pro, please respond to me with your config. Thanks for reading!

Thank you hatter for your reply.
I'm familiar with OWC, as I've done business with them since 2001, as well as XLR8.
I have a 2008 mac pro so the 2009 model related problems are not an issue in my situation
As I stated above I go to reputable vendors for my hardware who have specific mac experience. I look specifically for hardened compatibility so that there is support for things like deep sleep. The Sans Digital enclosure was over $200..it was not cheap. The USB/Esata combo is the most common interface for the enclosure storage market. Having a compatibility issue is a vendor fault, not the buyer. Having minutiae flavors of esata compatability based on chipsets roulette wheel is inexcusable. The enclosure needs that I have is for the medium to be removable and be able to be rebuilt at the hardware level, i.e. at the enclosure's control panel. To the mac its just a drive. The hotswap and back up is transparent to the OS and mac hardware, and allows me to change from raid 0/1 and do back up right from the enclosure interface.
So far I haven't had problems with USB/Firewire. Meanwhile Esata to me has been nothing but beta testing for vendors and seeing how the chipset manufacturers have gone loosey-goosey on following spec and just dump cheap chinese crap into the market with no pride.
for comparison:
USB/FW, PATA, SATA, SCSI
1) industry standard
2) native drivers
3) bootable. Period.
4) buy a controller card/raid card, plug it in, format, it works even through major OS upgrades.
5) USB/FW: Hot-swapable. Yes it really does work.
Esata:
1) Multiple standards (again, look at the Sonnet website to see the minefield one has to walk through to mate a controller card to an enclosure)
2) non native drivers. Buying an esata card is like marrying into the vendors family. Plus if you manage to get things working and do an OS upgrade, you are playing russian roulette. If you system boots off it, then get life insurance because you may kill yourself.
3)Not bootable and no one seems to care to explain why. Whats odd is that some earlier PCIx cards were bootable (like sonnet Temp 4x4) but their PCIe successors aren't. Not sure if this has to do with the host computer BIOS and/or the current chipsets from SI which rely on custom drivers from the vendors. Another lovely example of this are the ODD_SATA ports on the Mac pro: storage only, not bootable. Sure it makes sense now that I've learned it the hard way, however to users of FW/USB and even IDE, one would think that motherboard ports are bootable. Yes I know this is a mac bios thing and its not even considered as part of the feature set of the computer
4) As I've shown, each controller card seems to be unique, even if its from the same vendor. Even the drivers vary from card to card! Heck even the vendors are unsure as to how compatible their controller cards are with various enclosures. That is proprietary, not industry standard. OS upgrades doesn't seem to provide native driver support for Direct access and/or port multiplying interfaces. The problem with this is that film/video users like myself like to build bullet proof systems, and with raids that I've built from IDE, FW, or USB, I've never had the minutiae of compatibility issues as I've had with esata. I installed an Acard raid controller in my dual 800 back in 2001, installed the drives and forgot about it. it just worked through multiple OS upgrades. Not sure whats gong on with esata.
5) Can't call it hot swappable if I can't get the **** thing to wok in the first place.
My analysis is this: Esata is basically a proprietary format to the vendor that sells the hardware, while USB/FW is an industry standard. I bought a quality enclosure that said "esata", I bought a quality controller that said "esata", it didn't work. I had to learn the hard way about DA and PM enclosures and now about chipset conflicts. I've built computers since the late 80's amiga days, hot-rodding that computer well beyond spec and with custom cooling. SCSI terminators and IDE master/slave issues were easy-cheesey because they followed straightforward rules. This esata stuff is just plain sloppy work on the part of vendors and as Danny Glover said I'm getting to old for this **** as far as being a beta tester for hardware.

RAID 5 on a Mac Pro

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