RAID Card or Drive Failure ? ?

My Mac Pro with Apple RAID card will not boot to external FW800 or original install DVD if drives 2, 3, 4 are installed at the same time in any of the bays (i.e. gray screen, no apple, nothing).
If I remove or replace any one, or more, or remove all of drives 2, 3, 4 Mac Pro will boot to anything with an OS on it via Opt. key. I'm thinking if any one of drives 2, 3, 4 were bad and drawing too much power the same problem would present when drive 1 (J+ w/ OS) is substituted for any one of 2, 3, 4.
Replaced battery on RAID card no effect on problem. Passed Hardware Diagnostic on original Installer DVD. I'm thinking this has to be a RAID card issue. Do they go bad? Any opinions / suggestions would be greatly appreciated - Thank you,
John
My other related posts that document history of problem:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=13165862#13165862
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=13165864#13165864

In hindsight... this was posted as part of 10.6.7 release fixes...
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3631

Similar Messages

  • MacPro Raid Card single drive size limit

    OK this is a follow up to a previous question about the upper size limit of a single HD that the Macpro Raid card can address.
    It was pointed out to me that "The Apple RAID card cannot address more than 2.2TB of a drive" by Mr. Grant Bennet-Alder. So I am assuming that a 2TB SAS will work.
    I plan to RMA the 4TB drive (that was not recognised), so my question is will this drive work instead?
    Seagate Constellation ES 2TB 6GB/S SAS 7200RPM 3.5in (ST2000NM0001) Hard Drive  -  setup as JBOD.
    It's not that I don't believe what Grant has said, it's just that I don't want to RMA this drive as well, using the old wood working philosophy of 'measure twice, cut once.'
    And I spent 2 hr looking for this info on Apple's support site without any luck.
    SYS INFO
    MacPro 5,1
    2 X 6 Core 2.93 GHz Xeon
    Mac Pro RAID Card
    Bay 1:  450GB Seagate Cheetah SAS -JBOD
    Bay 2:  450GB Seagate Cheetah SAS - Raid set 1
    Bay 3:  450GB Seagate Cheetah SAS - Raid set 1
    Bay 4:  2TB Seagate Constellation (potential drive) to be JBOD
    Raid set 1: Raid 0 - 900GB
    OWC Mercury Accelsior 240GB
    ATI Radeon HD 5870
    Mac OS X 10.6.8
    All software updates current and applied
    Thanks
    -Robert
    Previous thread:
    https://discussions.apple.com/message/21675625#21675625

    If a Disk Fails If a RAID set or volume becomes degraded because a disk has failed, you can use RAID Utility to identify the disk that needs to be replaced.
    Note: If your RAID setup includes a spare drive, it is automatically incorporated into the RAID set, and the set switches from degraded to good as soon as the recovery process finishes. If there is no spare, the set will remain degraded until you replace the failed drive, and if a second drive fails before you replace the first, you could lose data.
    To replace a failed disk:
    1  Open RAID Utility, select the RAID set or volume that is displaying a problem status indicator, and look for a drive bay with a red status indicator. The bay numbers in RAID Utility correspond to the numbered drive bays in your Mac Pro or Xserve.
    2  Replace the bad drive module.
    3  Use the Make Spare command to set up the new drive as a global spare. If no spare was available when the original drive failed, the RAID card uses the new spare immediately to rebuild the affected RAID set and volumes. If a spare was available at the time of the failure, it is already incorporated into the affected RAID set, and the new spare remains available until it is needed.
    https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/0/MA318/en_US/RAID_Utility_User_Guide.pdf

  • RAID card or drive?

    My Mac Pro with Apple RAID card will not boot to external FW800 or original install DVD if drives 2, 3, 4 are installed at the same time in any of the bays (i.e. gray screen, no apple, nothing). If I remove or replace any one, or more, or remove all of drives 2, 3, 4 Mac Pro will boot to anything with an OS on it via Opt. key. I'm thinking if any one of drives 2, 3, 4 were bad and drawing too much power the same problem would present when drive 1 (J+ w/ OS) is substituted for any one of 2, 3, 4. Replaced battery on RAID card no effect on problem. Passed Hardware Diagnostic on original Installer DVD. I'm thinking this has to be a RAID card issue. Do they go bad? Any opinions would be greatly appreciated.

    Software RAID?
    No, I have an the Apple RAID card that came with the Mac Pro, factory installed. RAID set was created with Apple RAID Utility. About testing, D-Genius only does a random/sustained read/write. I like the looks of intech's suite, but just spent $$ on new, replacement SAS drive, they're still not cheap, even with the advent of SSDs. Anyway, I had saved a profile of the DG benchtest on the previous RAID volume. When I ran the new disk the results very closely parallel the previous profile very closely. Odd thing is that I'm not sure it was a hardware problem (bad disk). Once I introduced the new disk into the mix, I was able to also re-introduce the old suspected bad disk and it worked. Maybe a RAID fluke??? Maybe the disk was intermittently failing causing the RAID set to fall over? Maybe I'm just cursed....
    If you're really board you can check out all the associated posts from when this debacle began:
    http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=13165864#13165864
    Anyhow, thanks for your help!
    J.

  • MacPro RAID card - best drives?

    Hey, anybody have any experience they'd like to share on a good set of drives to go with the Apple RAID card? I want to get 4 and I'm looking for maximum speed, but I can't break the bank, so no Raptors.
    cheers,
    -r

    Well, save your $$ and just DON'T! get the Apple RAID card, then you could afford some decent drives.
    600GB 10K VRs $279 x 2
    OWC SSD 100GB x 2
    As for what drives, bare in mind -
    If you read the Apple Support Mac Pro link to RAID card FAQ:
    Question: *Which drives does Apple support for the Mac Pro RAID Card and the Xserve RAID Card?*
    Answer: Only Apple SATA drives and Promise 450GB SAS Drive modules sold through the Apple Store are supported for use with the Mac Pro RAID Card (Early 2009) and the Xserve RAID Card (Early 2009). Apple 300GB SAS Drive modules are supported with the Mac Pro RAID Card (Late 2007) and Xserve RAID Card (Early 2007). Drives must be either all Serial ATA (SATA) or all Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) drives. SSD drive modules are not recommended for the Apple RAID Card because these drives use their own on-disk cache and cannot take advantage of the protection provided by the battery-backed cache on the RAID card.
    http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1346#faq8
    People do try and use retail SATA drives, with mixed results. I have never seen anyone mix SAS and SATA.

  • Apple Raid Card, multiple drives and volumes

    Hallo,
    my xserve (early-2008) has an Apple Raid Card and two 300GB SAS-drives installed (mirroring).
    Is it possible to install a third disk (300GB SAS) and to use it as a separate Volume ?
    Disk 1 (300GB SAS) - Apple Raid Card mirroring: Volume 1 (300GB)
    Disk 2 (300GB SAS) - Apple Raid Card mirroring: Volume 1 (300GB)
    Disk 3 (300GB SAS) - Volume 2 (300GB)
    How do I have to set this up using Apple Raid Utility ?
    Thanks for your help !

    Is it possible to install a third disk (300GB SAS) and to use it as a separate Volume ?
    Yes. Of course.
    How do I have to set this up using Apple Raid Utility ?
    No. A third drive should just appear on the desktop. You only need RAID utility if you want to add that drive to an array, which doesn't sound like the case here.

  • Apple RAID Card, All Drives RAID?

    For those of you who have the Apple RAID card, I was wondering if all the drives are configured into one RAID set? Or can you have say a single boot drive, a third data drive and then have the remaining two drives set up as a RAID 0?

    I was interested in using the RAID card for 2 drives only, for storing captured video.
    I don't want to use the RAID for my boot/data drive.

  • XServe Early 2008 (MA882LL/A) + RAID card SAS drive capacity question

    I've tried searching the web and support forums, but haven't been able to find a clear answer to the following question:
    I have an XServe Early 2008 (MA882LL/A) with the Apple RAID card and three 73GB SAS ADMs. It's been working great for the last two years. I'm about to upgrade it to 10.6 Server, and if possible would like to swap in larger drives at the same time (since it'll be down for an afternoon anyway). However, only 73GB and 300GB SAS ADMs were ever offered for this model, and Apple says that the Promise 450GB ADM is not compatible with it. What I can't determine is whether I can put a larger drive (notably, a Seagate ST32000444SS) into the Apple ADM sled. The RAID controller seems to have no problem with large SATA drives in the SATA sleds, which seems like a good sign, but I'd rather not order $1K worth of new drives and discover in the data center that they don't work.
    Does anyone know definitively whether or not larger drives will work in SAS ADMs with this model of XServe? The RAID controller firmware is current (hardware rev 1.0.0, firmware rev M-2.0.3.3), if that makes a difference. I've read all the docs I can fine--I'd be happiest with an "I tried it and it did/didn't work" kind of answer .
    Thanks much,
    Amanda Walker
    Reston, VA

    Good morning
    I am watching this thread as well. I have two of the same servers (without the RAID card) and have wondered the same thing as I migrate to Snow Leopard and as my data drives continue to fill up. Apple techs and local service techs have not been willing to endorse Amanda's solution for me and have stuck to the Apple Drive Compatibility chart which certifies 73 and 300 GB SAS drives only for this model XServe.
    Thanks for any info you might provide.
    Greg
    PS Amanda, I would be interested in one of your 73GB SAS drives in an ADM as a boot drive should you decide to surplus one or two of your drives.

  • Mac Pro with Apple Raid Card - 1 drive OSX (JBOD) + 1 drive Vista?

    Can anyone walk me through what I'd need to do to set up an early 2008 model Mac Pro with the Apple Raid Card pre-installed and 2 500 gig drives, so that I can have OSX on the first drive and Vista on the second?
    I know it defeats the purpose of the raid card, but...
    What I've done so far is:
    1. Removed drive #2
    2. Install and using Raid Utility, add the first drive as a JBOD set/volume
    3. After install, shut down the machine
    4. Re-add drive #2
    5. Restart
    6. Use disk utility to add drive #2
    I tried to use bootcamp, but it only wants to put windows on the first drive - which won't work because it is RAID.

    Run Vista off an ATA interface in the 2nd optical drive. There is an SATA 2 ATA adapter.
    I think you can boot Vista off some RAID controllers, check out Highpoint RocketRAIDs. Should be able to configure the RR.
    Boot Vista off USB is a stretch.

  • Re: Unable to rebuild in mirrored RAID after hard drive failure BOOTCAMP

    CHRIIIIIIIS!!!
    Problem!
    first off, you're a genius. thanks for helping everyone around here.
    Second.
    I just installed Mavericks on my MacBook Pro 2012, and it broke Bootcamp.
    I have a 750GB hard drive and it has 2 partitions, on for Mac and one for BootCamp, nice and simple.
    When I open Disk Utility I get this....
    It really broke the partition, it used to be named "BOOTCAMP"
    Any help would be appreciated and yes i know how to use terminal, if that helps you.
    Frank

    Awesome, this just saved my sanity, thank you!
    I was about to go totally insane when I couldn't find the option to add a new drive to the existing RAID mirror and then rebuild the whole thing.
    In the Apple help, it just says "go to RAID" "click rebuild" - but this is absolutely not how it works!
    Adding the new, empty drive by drag and drop wasn't mentioned anywhere - in addition to that I have never seen a program that has certain functions which can only be accessed by drag and drop.
    Also the hard disk utility doesn't look like drag and drop GUI at all.
    It was really easy as soon as I read this thread, so thanks again, this totally saved my day!

  • Unable to rebuild in mirrored RAID after hard drive failure

    I plan on getting a mirrored raid setup for my backups of all my work that I have done. I am currently testing out how the built in software RAID works in OSX.
    I have setup a mirrored RAID with two flash drives and it works fine, i then tried to simulate if one of the disks were to fail by reformatting it, and then i tried to plug it back in to rebuild it, but it does not allow me to do so the rebuild button is greyed out. Could it be because i had the RAID setup as automatically rebuild? If someone could walk me through the process of rebuilding the raid setup that would be great, i would like to figure this out before purchasing the harddrives.

    Awesome, this just saved my sanity, thank you!
    I was about to go totally insane when I couldn't find the option to add a new drive to the existing RAID mirror and then rebuild the whole thing.
    In the Apple help, it just says "go to RAID" "click rebuild" - but this is absolutely not how it works!
    Adding the new, empty drive by drag and drop wasn't mentioned anywhere - in addition to that I have never seen a program that has certain functions which can only be accessed by drag and drop.
    Also the hard disk utility doesn't look like drag and drop GUI at all.
    It was really easy as soon as I read this thread, so thanks again, this totally saved my day!

  • '09 Mac Pro 8 Core 2.93ghz with Raid Card

    Last year Apple swapped an '08 to '09 machine to solve a raid-battery issue in the original raid card of the '08 machine. Battery would fail to recondition after about the second attempt. It took a year of calling Apple and finally they came through supplementing version 1 raid card with version 2 and a new machine.
    The error was noted in the RAID utility '08 machine as (Battery Failed(0x0#=18)).
    As it happens, I don't use RAID but needed the card at first purchase to run fast SCSI drives for music production within the machine as I transport the machine to various venues and they had to be contained within for my applications. When I purchased the machine I also purchased the SCSI drive. It was about a 9K investment with ram. I always buy Apple Care fortunately.
    Now, I have this '09 machine which yesterday exhibited the same raid card battery conditioning failure on about the second or third reconditioning attempt so I called Apple today and they are sending a replacement battery.
    The reason I post this here is that this error described above is exactly what happened on the '08 machine and it's raid card. Apple's first attempt to repair starts with the battery, then replacement of the entire raid card if that does not work, then finally they do whatever is required to solve the problem. All this is good but it takes allot of my time and I need the machine to function now.
    Please note, If I ran the machine less the raid card and say 4 WD raptor drives I would have none of these issues and similar speed per drive internally. This is exactly what I asked for back on the original machine. I just wanted to be done with attempting a raid/mac machine. The machine upgrade was fine but I hope were not looking at another year to sort all this out again.
    I wondered if anyone else out these purchase a Mac Pro with this configuration and has had similar experiences they might share?
    I really don't want another year to go by before it's rectified although with this new RAID version 2 possibly I'm ok. Any advance sharing of info would be greatly appreciated as I wait for the battery replacement coming in a few days in attempts to fix the problem. Unfortunately, this could be a temporary fix allowing only a few months of operation prior to another failure, we'll see. This machine is a mission critical one used every day for production.
    Thanks for reading this post.
    GB

    I have almost never read anything good about Apple Pro RAID, and try to steer people away ever since 2007 when it came out...
    Still have a closet full of ATTO and Adaptec SCSI but times have changed.
    WD is even coming out with 600GB 10K VelociRaptor for $299.
    And there seems to be a new rash of RAID and battery questions popping up again.
    Audio and music use to mean you needed Fibre and SCSI and the lowest latency, probably even now. But Apple internal RAID?
    Any reason why can't be external? Maybe see about replacing with Apple FC or 3rd party?

  • XServe 2006 RAID Card Issues

    Basically, I was gifted (some gift!) a Late 2006 XServe 2.0GHz Dual QX, with 4 GB RAM, and basically was told 'It does not boot. We give up.'
    So heres what I have found so far..
    It has an Apple Raid Card (don't ask me much more than that, or ill have to tear it apart again). But the 10.4.10 Install disk doesnt show the Raid card or drives (SATA Apple Drive Module 80.0). So is my card toast? Not supported by 10.4? Need a direction to run at because this thing is starting really get under my skin.
    If I use a SATA Drive bay via USB (WD 80GB Drive), the disk appears, but the Server won't last long before it Kernel Panics, but it works during Installation Media Verification..
    In the meantime, Ill tear apart the server again (Only a few minutes) and get the Raid Card ID.

    An easy way to see if it's a raid card is on the part of the RAID/Backplane you can see when you slide the top cover off, if it has 2 chips with silver heatsinks on it's a RAID card if it's 1 chip it's a backplane. The RAID Card also has a small connection for a RAID battery..
    as for why it doesn't work.. Have a look at the following
    1) Do the drives light up when you start the machine.. You should see a green light (always on) and a blue activity light which should flash.
    2) If it doesn't then there is an orange ribbon cable that goes from the RAID/Backplane to the logic board. Make sure this is properly connected and doesn't have any breaks in it.
    The RAID card will work in a non raid configuration so you don't need to get rid of it if you don't want to. An easy option to check the server would be to install 10.6 or Lion on a USB stick and start the server up for it by plugging it in and holding down the ALT key when you power on the server. From the system profiler you should be able to see if it recognises the RAID card (Hardware RAID) and also if it passes it's diagnostics test.
    There are of course a lot of things that could be wrong with it.. You can remove the RAID/Backplane board and start the server up from USB/Firewire to narrow down your testing.. One thing the 2006/2008 servers are pretty cheap on eBay in working form so you might find it better to get one from there. The 2009's hold their value a lot more as you can still install the current OS on them..
    Hope that helps
    Beatle

  • Intel Xserve With Raid card Remote install Question

    I am currently trying to remotely install OSX server on an Intel 2008 Xserve with a newly fitted raid card (Apple) I get as far as choosing which HD to install but none of the drives show? (there are all Apple brand 300GB SAS)
    Can I only install it locally on the machine if a Raid card/SAS drives are in there??
    Thanks

    Hi,
    I just started to do the same. Did you find a solution?
    Thanks,
    Hans

  • MacPro Raid Card w/ SAS Drives is battery required?

    We have a MacPro (early 2008) dual 2.8 Quad with Mac Raid Card and 4 300g SAS drives. The battery became an issue early on it was always showing low on start-ups. Now it shows failed. I am now running system with 3 drives striped raid 0. Is the battery required to be replaced? I like this system for the speed it gives us on short HD, using my original media as the back-up. I am a little out of my league with the SAS drives so any opperation tips would be a plus! Thanx in advance....

    The RAID card allows for the use of SAS drives or for the use of RAID 5 (which requires checksum calculation on writes and for data re-creation after a failure).
    The battery assures that the data will be held in the RAID card's RAM until it can be written to the drives, even if a power failure occurs just after the data are written to the card (but before they are re-written to the drives).
    Not using that feature? You don't need the battery.
    Not using RAID 5 or SAS drives? You don't need the Apple RAID card. Disk Utility can set up Striped or Mirrored RAID sets.

  • MacPro RAID card not initiating recovery after defective drive replaced

    One of my artists is using an Early 2009 Mac Pro on 10.9.5 (13F1077). On Saturday morning, while he was not in the office, Drive 1 warned that SMART was reporting early signs of failure. The RAID card degraded the RAID set. I replaced Drive 1 and marked it as a global spare; but recovery is not initiating. I have, subsequent to installing the drive and marking it as a global spare, rebooted the Mac Pro; but the RAID Utility is not showing any Tasks running, and especially nothing about rebuilding the RAID set. As of now, the RAID set and RAID volume are not available. It appears that I can either try to preserve the data on the drives, or I can attempt to manually rebuild the RAID set; but not both. Unfortunately, the artist had all of his projects on the RAID and had not backed them up to servers at the time of the failure.

    If a Disk Fails If a RAID set or volume becomes degraded because a disk has failed, you can use RAID Utility to identify the disk that needs to be replaced.
    Note: If your RAID setup includes a spare drive, it is automatically incorporated into the RAID set, and the set switches from degraded to good as soon as the recovery process finishes. If there is no spare, the set will remain degraded until you replace the failed drive, and if a second drive fails before you replace the first, you could lose data.
    To replace a failed disk:
    1  Open RAID Utility, select the RAID set or volume that is displaying a problem status indicator, and look for a drive bay with a red status indicator. The bay numbers in RAID Utility correspond to the numbered drive bays in your Mac Pro or Xserve.
    2  Replace the bad drive module.
    3  Use the Make Spare command to set up the new drive as a global spare. If no spare was available when the original drive failed, the RAID card uses the new spare immediately to rebuild the affected RAID set and volumes. If a spare was available at the time of the failure, it is already incorporated into the affected RAID set, and the new spare remains available until it is needed.
    https://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/0/MA318/en_US/RAID_Utility_User_Guide.pdf

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