Raid Card Constantly Degrades Volumes - Mac Pro

I just got a new Mac Pro with Raid card. I of course purchased hard drives separately, rather than apples inflated rate. I picked up four 750 GB Samsung F1 Raid (F1R) edition drives from OWC thinking it would work well with my system.
No matter what raid level I choose, within a day or two it says one of drives were removed and then it says replaced within 15 seconds, causing the entire raid set to be degraded. I believe it might just be these drives go into a lower power standby mode and aren't as responsive as the raid card wants them to be....hence it declares them "removed." This means no matter what I have tried I am constantly changing raid levels hoping one will fair better than another and wasting 10+ hours initializing and reinstalling.
Any hints, can I make the raid card less sensitive through firmware update or something? I'm kind of bummed I have these four nice drives and the best option seems to be use them as individual JBOD drives.
Please help.

I had gone through this same process numerous times (though I was hoping for RAID 5). Apple officially says that they don't "support non-apple drives," though you would hope many work anyways. I believe my problem at least is probably due to the firmware on my hard drives not responding in the time frame the apple RAID card expects. So, I doubt your RAID card is faulty (though I greatly wish someone would post a solution to our problems).
After you give up trying to use RAID completely, you can erase all your RAID sets....select only one of the disks to create a set with, select the JBOD (Just a Bundle of Disks) mode. Repeat for all of your hard drives, create an individual volume on each, and install OS X. You will now be set up in a standard 4 separate hard disk mode with no RAID protection. However, you still utilize your RAID card so you get the added benefits of a large disk i/o cache (256 MB I believe) and a battery backup for your write operations. Not what I paid for but at least something that works. Be sure to set at least one of the disks for time machine to use as a backup (so you get something for data protection). Hope this helps, it took me awhile to decide to ditch RAID and think logically to get it working at least.
Please can anyone help solve our problems? Please!

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Need help with RAID Card and degraded Raid-5 errors

Dear all,
I recently purchased a used Apple RAID card for my 2008 Mac Pro 8-Core. The installation went smooth, the card was immediately recognized and the battery reconditioned within one night.
So I started setting up a Raid Set with the 4 identical drives which I already used before as a software Raid. But each time the Raid Level-5 Volume is created, somewhat later the status turns red and the Raid is listed as "degraded"!
A closer look at log reveals:
+19:42:54 Drive carrier 00:01 inserted+
+19:42:27 Background task aborted: Task=Init,Scope=DRVGRP,Group=RS1+
+19:42:27 Degraded RAID set RS1 - No spare available for rebuild+
+19:42:26 Degraded RAID set RS1+
+19:42:22 Drive carrier 00:01 removed+
+15:10:57 Created volume “R1V1” on RAID set “RS1”+
So it seems that the drive from Bay 1 somehow gets lost (removed) a few hours after the volume is being created and anysoon later it's being "reinserted"...
Of course, the drive is NOT removed, nobody touched the Mac Pro! Also I did the same procedure 3 times and the result was always the same.
I also tried setting up JBOD and different RAID levels which do all work without a problem. Only when choosing RAID5 (what I intentionally bought the card for), the problem reappears
Anyone any solution or hint for me concerning this problem? Many thanks in advance!

One drive completely broke down later. Replaced that drive and since the problem's gone!

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Tell me what you think of this potential setup then...
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http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284
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Apple offers the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT with 256MB of GDDR3 as a standard option, with the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT with 512MB of GDDR3 as a $150 BTO option.
I primarily use AE CS3 using adaptive resolution in lieu of Open GL. The projects are very 3d intensive. My initial thought is that the NVIDIA card has more VRAM and would be a better pick - but would my $$$ be better off toward more RAM? Does using CS4 make a difference?
Any thoughts would be appreciated. And yes, I have searched the forums but have not found anything definitive.

Personally, I'd buy more RAM. The standard display card supplied with the Mac Pro will have perfectly good specs for AE and Prem Pro.
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Amazon UK then perhaps? OWC/Macsales is a good place to see what products they have as they are Mac primarily and support Mac Pro of course.
the products they have will list and of course they need to work in 1x as well as 4x.
Lion has been out a year, and unlike ML or early adopters most should or will but again, look and make sure it says 10.7.4, some may say 10.6 or later - have to ask.
You can also dig around and find what chip a product uses and is based on and then shop for similar chip based.
Can we assume you need more USB ports, or you have dead USB on the Mac and not for disk drives in which case USB3 or eSATA are better but USB3 has been iffy on Macs - now that Apple has some and some support in 10.8 while CalDigit card needed drivers for theirs.
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http://ssdeurope.com/
Something like this, but no knowledge or idea - compare it to Sonnettech.com USB 2.0 cards
http://www.amazon.com/Best-Connectivity-Port-PCI-Express-SD-PEX20052/dp/B003V8AT W2/

Will Graphics Card Help Aperture on Mac Pro?

I've been using Aperture for many years on a variety of Mac hardware. I have 5 or 6 image libraries, ranging in size from 50gb to 250gb. I have no referenced images, do not use "faces" or other CPU-intensive features, and often perform tasks which reportedly improve Aperture performance (deleting caches, repairing/rebuilding libraries, defragging hard drives. deleting prefs). While these tricks often result in a snappy experience on relaunch, Aperture returns to its sluggish ways after a few minutes of work.
My workflow is very simple -- I plug in my camera, download photos to the HD, and then edit them, which consists of adjustments such as exposure, white balance, sharpening, rotating, cropping. I don't do much retouching, red eye, or other fancy editing. Occasionally I use the "external" edit feature to retouch in Photoshop. I shot for many years with a Canon Rebel, 14MP I believe, and recently got a Nikon D800. I am finding the performance going through D800 raw files (not even editing, just flipping through them) unacceptable. For example, if I go to hybrid list/preview view, and press the "down" key 10 or 15 times, by the 5th image, there is a very noticeable lag, and often the display beachballs for 10 seconds or more before it gets to the bottom of the list. Basic tasks such as cropping or rotating often lock the display for long periods of time.
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My question now is, would I see a significant performance gain if I were to upgrade yet again to a faster graphics card, such as the Radeon 7950? I've been reading up on these cards, and it seems like native support is coming in 10.8.3. While I hesitate to pour more money into my quest for a useable Aperture system, I wonder if this would finally show some significant performance gains. I've read conflicting reports from other users who've upgraded the graphics card. Is the advantage mainly for 3D or gaming applications or would this help Aperture too?
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In the past Aperture has been very GPU-dependent. The very best G5 tower would bog on Aperture unless the stock GPU card had been upgraded. I expect current Aperture also to benefit from a stronger GPU but I do not have absolute info on that. And your existing 5770 is not a lame card.
I know 16 GB RAM seems like a lot, but with D800 files and an Aperture/Photoshop workflow you may still be paging out to disk. My Aperture/Photoshop workflow paged out at 8 GB RAM with files 1/3 the size of the D800 files.
You should evaluate whether or not you have adequate RAM:
Look at the Page Outs number under System Memory on the Activity Monitor app before starting a typical Aperture/Photoshop work session and write the number down. Recheck the Page Outs count after working for a few hours and write the number down again. If the page outs change (manual calculation of ending page outs number minus starting page outs number) is not zero your workflow is RAM-starved.
Ignore the pie charts and other info in Activity Monitor because they are often misleading regarding RAM usage. For RAM analysis, count page outs.
If your test shows that page outs increase at all during operation you should add RAM. RAM is dirt cheap and use of additional RAM a very desirable characteristic for an Aperture/Photoshop workflow. If it was me I would double to 32 GB RAM and set PS (PS Preferences/Performance/Memory) to use 16 GB of RAM.
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Some apps like browsers are notorious for "leaking" memory so when doing serious images work keep non-essential applications closed. A SSD drive for boot helps because when apps open in just 3 seconds there is no reason to keep extraneous apps open.
HTH
-Allen
P.S. I strongly recommend that original images be fully backed up before importing into Aperture or any other images management application.
P.P.S. Makhe sure you have a properly set PS Scratch Disk assigned on a fast underfilled drive, and empty the scratch disk routinely.

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- Enable SATA RAID and enter RAID BIOS to set up the RAID configuration of your liking, and with what hard disks.
- Set BIOS to boot off the installation disk.
Now jumping to the Windows installation:
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- Let the installation manager find all required XP drivers. - And from there it is pretty obvious.
Mod: When installation is complete and system is stable etc, power off and connect the old data disk to the system and start copying. Be aware that system may want to boot from the old disk.

Lacie 4Big Quadra | eSATA Card Needed for 2008 Mac Pro

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Well, you didn't define what is considered 'affordable' so here's my answer: OWC deals in reliable products that in my experience work well with Macs.

How do I migrate the data on a RAID on my old Mac Pro to a new RAID array on my new Mac Pro?

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Read my post in this discussion.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3445538?start=0&tstart=0

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Len

leonardfromoshawa wrote:
To backup in the future requires hooking up each machine individually and using TM.
To do it that way, yes, but that's not your best bet.
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Second, the inconvenience of switching back and forth means both Macs won't get regular backups. If you do switch frequently, there's the risk of damaging a port or plug.
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ACES MacPro Workstation Seat
Processor
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Memory
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Display
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Now here is the back, showing the heatsink paste still in place, and the thermal pads used to cool the RAM chips to the central cooler:
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Hey,
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Raid Card Constantly Degrades Volumes - Mac Pro

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