RAID card in 2009 Mac Pro & EMC Retrospect 8.x: Experience

I spent the last few days in the often bizarre world of trying to figure the best way to utilize the 2009 RAID card with the newly released version 8 Retrospect from EMC (Iomega). Here's my warning: From my experience version 8 and the RAID card do not get along at all and often result in that dreaded black screen stating that you have to press the power button and restart in multiple languages, meaning the computer has crashed really badly.
But let me start from the beginning:
we recently got 2 new Western Dig RE4GP 2TB drives which were installed in slot 2 and 4 and then RAIDed together (RAID 0 I think). I then tried to backup 700GB from a Seagate ES2 drive to the new RAID volume using Retro8. After a few minutes I got the black multilanguage crash sign, forcing a manual power off. Not good. A few more similar bad experiences and I gave up on version 8 and went back to version 6.1x. This version seemed to work much better and I was able to backup the 700GB data to the RAID volume. The next test was restoring the 700GB data on the RAID volume. So I wanted to restore the data to the same RAID volume, so the computer would be reading the Retrospect dataset and then writing the data back to the same drive. Maybe not optimal in drive throughput performance but surely technical feasible (yes, ideally you would backup the data to one/another drive and then restore the data to a third target drive, in my case the RAID volume). Turns out this too is a no go. After restoring 300GB the dreaded multilanguage sign appears and again, after inspecting the error logs, it seems the RAID card has just freaked out. At this point I am getting very mad at Apple as I can hardly find any really usable information on the RAID card anywhere on the web plus making a $6k computer perform in a rather delicate way which is not the usual way I experience Macs. Questions in my mind: Do the drives need to be in adjacent slots, is there a problem with the 2 TB drives, why can't the card read and restore to the same RAID volume, why does the RAID card crash the system so badly, isthe computer being damaged by crashing like this etc. I am getting the impression that this expensive RAID card's performance is kind of flaky and there might be some software issues. Also I have a suspicion (I have no way of proving it) that the RAID card might be using more PCI bandwidth than it should thus causing other problems I won't get into here. So after this rant my questions would be:
-anybody else had any success with Retrospect 8 and the RAID card?
-might my crashes not really stem from the RAID card but from some other thing I am doing?
-any pointers on things I might be missing?
There just seems to be so little user feedback on the RAID card here or elsewhere which I think might be because relatively few people have the RAID card.
Any advice would be great.

You realize that not all disk drives are certified to work with Apple's
RAID card?
Is the ES2 also controlled by the RAID card?
Those RE4s are very very new. Does Apple or WD list them as certified to work on that card? you know, the way they often use to in the case of SCSI controllers and disk drives.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306231
http://www.apple.com/macpro/technology/storage.html
http://www.apple.com/support/macpro/ - links to articles pertinent to Mac Pro such as Pro RAID card.

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    What USB 3.0 card should I get for early 2009 Mac Pro so I can connect the Drobo 5D? They say get CalDigit or Sonnet. Anyone have preference or experience with reliability with this. I am running Lion and Trying to find which is better as I know from experience not all cards are created equal. Thanks in advance for your help!

    yakov536 wrote:
    High Point RocketU Quad USB 3.0 for Mac is working great for me. Had an issue with CD/DVD Drive which was resolved with most current driver downloaded from the support site.
    Running Moutain Lion on Early 2009, mirroring two Seagate Go Flex 2TB USB 3.0 Drives. Installed in Slot 4.
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    HPT Support was responsive and very helpfull using the WEB Portal under the product page.
    I have some comments and a suggestion:
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    Henry

  • Where can I find a wireless card for my early 2009 Mac Pro (MB871LL/A, MacPro4,1)?

    Where on on earth can I purchase a wireless card for my Mac Pro?
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    Well I found what I think is the correct card on B&H.
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  • Early 2009 Mac Pro:  Adding a Firewire 400 card

    I want to add a firewire 400 PCIe card to my Mac Pro as a last ditch effort to get my Presonus Firepods working properly. Presonus recommends the firewire card have a TI chipset. See my thread: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2770203&tstart=0
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    I'd take a look at the Sonnet range of cards. I use them for video, which I guess has similar throughput and lack-of-latency requirements to multi-channel audio.
    http://www.sonnettech.com/product/allegrofw400pcie.html
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  • I have some questions regarding setting up a software RAID 0 on a Mac Pro

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    QUESTION 5:
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    Well said.
    Steps to set up RAID
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    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2559
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    SCRATCH: Temporary space; erased between projects and steps.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StandardRAIDlevels
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    To help understand and configure your 2009 Nehalem Mac Pro:
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    http://macperformanceguide.com/
    http://www.macgurus.com/guides/storageaccelguide.php
    http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/harddrives/index.html
    http://macperformanceguide.com/OptimizingPhotoshop-Configuration.html
    http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404440.html

  • My Early 2009 Mac Pro won't restart after installing Mavericks

    I have installed Mavericks on my Early 2009 Mac Pro and all seemed to install just fine but when I restart the Mac then it won't get past a grey screen with Apple logo. It seems that it does get reasonabley far into the startup, it gets passed the grey screen with cricling progress thingmy under the Apple logo, then it flashes very quickly and after that it is a grey screen with the Apple logo and no further.
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    I zapped the PRAM.
    I connected it to my MacBook Pro in Target Disk mode and used ProSoft's Drive Genius 3 to check over the startup hard drive again and check disk permissions and all is well.
    It still will not startup
    I would be most grateful if someone could assist.

    Take each of these steps that you haven't already tried. Stop when the problem is resolved.
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    The first step in dealing with a boot failure is to secure your data. If you want to preserve the contents of the startup drive, and you don't already have at least one current backup, you must try to back up now, before you do anything else. It may or may not be possible. If you don't care about the data that has changed since your last backup, you can skip this step.   
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    b. If you have access to a working Mac, and both it and the non-working Mac have FireWire or Thunderbolt ports, boot the non-working Mac in target disk mode. Use the working Mac to copy the data to another drive. This technique won't work with USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.
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    Step 2
    Sometimes a boot failure can be resolved by resetting the NVRAM.
    Step 3
    If you use a wireless keyboard, trackpad, or mouse, replace or recharge the batteries. The battery level shown in the Bluetooth menu item may not be accurate.
    Step 4
    If there's a built-in optical drive, a disc may be stuck in it. Follow these instructions to eject it.
    Step 5
    Press and hold the power button until the power shuts off. Disconnect all wired peripherals except those needed to boot, and remove all aftermarket expansion cards. Use a different keyboard and/or mouse, if those devices are wired. If you can boot now, one of the devices you disconnected, or a combination of them, is causing the problem. Finding out which one is a process of elimination.
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    Safe mode is much slower to boot and run than normal, and some things won’t work at all, including wireless networking on certain Macs.
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    Step 7
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    Step 9
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    Step 10
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    Step 11
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