RAID Card/SAS Controller Options for MacPro1,1

What options do I have with a MacPro1,1 for a SAS controller and/or hardware RAID?
The two products on the apple store (linked below) both have unfavorable reviews. It is also unclear what MacPro models the two cards work with.
My target configuration is 4 SAS drives in RAID 5.
Older? 256MB cache raid card: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MA849Z/B
Newer? 512MB cache raid card: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB845Z/A
Thank you to for reading and for any assistance you can offer.

Any app on the iPad which has the ability to connect to the Mac over the network shouldn't care whether the Mac Pro is wireless or wired - provided your network is configured so that the iPad and Mac Pro are on the same subnet (basically their IP addresses need to be the same except for the last number). Have you tried using the controller app with the Mac Pro wired as it is?
Matt

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Raid Card, what to look for in a card?

Hi guys,
Im looking for help on what to look for in a Raid card. Im new to Raid, but i have read the tweakers pages and it seems like the way forward.
Im a full time editor working with AVC-Intra footage doing fast cuts. Im about to ditch my 2008 mac pro and build a up to date PC around the i7 4930k. Im planning on running 8x3-4tb drives for footage; raid 5, 3x3tb raid 3 for exports, maybe 2x256 ssd raid 0 for boot, 2x3tb drive for page file and media cache, and maybe 3x3tb for stock footage raid 0.
Im totally lost in what to look for in a Raid card?
Cheers Ryan

For 13 drives is there a cheaper option?
Yes, Areca 1882ix-16, 1264IL-16, Intel RS2WG160, LSI 9260-16i - or for that matter, any RAID controller with 13+ internal connections. There are much cheaper controllers from Highpoint and others, as well.
If your next question is, is it worth it going cheaper? ...Usually not for me personally - at least certainly not with Highpoint or other entry level controllers with subpar support and all kinds of performance and reliability problems. Even Tier 1 controllers aren't exempt from them.
That said, I am curious about Intel and LSI controllers I listed above. The LSI one especially so given the availability of SSD caching and other neat features.
Hope this helps.

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.

Raid card and scratch disk setup for FCP

Hi Guys
Can anybody tell me what is the correct way to set up a raid card and scratch disk for FCP if you have 3 x 2TB internal hard drives, with the OS on HD1 and drives 2 and 3 dedicated for FCP
Also with this i also have all my documents i.e work stuff, invoices, pictures, music ect from my old windows PC and used to have them stored on HD2 with the Windows 7 OS on HD1 - i have been told that it is fine if i put this on the same drives as FCP is this correct...?
i only ask this as i have been told how to do it in different ways by 3 people......

Thanks John, although i'm rather embarrassed to admit that I am a complete newbie when it comes to technical/computer hardware terms (i.e. I have no idea about different types of disks, other than a HDD and a SSD, or even what the difference is between your media cache and a scratch disk).
This means that after reading all the links you so helpfully provided hasn't done much other than making me feel even more stupid!
The best that I can conclude from what I think that i've understood is that I will use:
Intel 530 Series 120GB SSD for O/S, Programs (and Pagefile?? No idea what this is, sorry)
Samsung 840BW 500GB - Scratch Disk (is this the media cache?) and preview
Seagate Barracuda 3TB HDD - media, projects, and exports
Please tell me if i've got something around the wrong way....
Thanks again.

Mac Pro 3,1 (early 2008) RAID card hangs at startup

Hello,
I have a Mac Pro 2.8Ghz Quad Core (early 2008) with 10GB RAM and 512MB VRAM.
I have noticed that the Mac Pro RAID card hangs at startup for RAID volumes.
It seems to start okay with a single boot drive (have used both WD Raptor 150GB 10K and Seagate 'factory' 320GB 7200rpm as boot drives...)
But the RAID 0 array using two factory 1TB WD 7200rpm is what seems to hang at startup. I have run Disk Warrior, Disk Utility and RAID Utility and found no major errors...
Any suggestions? Have already replaced the RAID Card battery with OEM part.
Thanks!

Say good-bye to the Apple Pro RAID card. It started its life as a $999 card to support SAS/SCSI and/or RAID5.
Then the problems with 2.5TB drives, battery, and does it really do something and add to your system.
I would use SoftRAID and create a 3-drive mirror of 2TB drives instead.
And an SSD for the system.
Seems like those are some very old drives.
I have a lot of the 150GB 10K VR drives, and some 300GB along with older 74GB and a couple of the Raptor series. Loud and while solid I would use for spare boot drives, clone only.
Backup your data, pull the RAID card, and restore to the drives. And clone the system onto a 250GB $109 SSD. $139 buys a 400MB/sec writes and 800MB/sec reads Samsung PCIe-SSD XP941. None of my SCSI 15K drives would come close.

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

How to configure RAID 5 sys using SAS controller for APP CS4

Hi I would like to know how to configure my 3 HardDrives (600GB each) on RAID 5 connected to SAS controller to work smoothly with PremierePro CS4. Mainly to store scratch disk, and all preview files, etc.. At present it shows as one big hard drive in C:\ It shows as follows: OS(C 0.98 TB free of 1.08TB I would like to have at least one HDD out of 3 to store my scratch disk files and preview files... I have installed only CS4 Master Collection + Windows 7 64bit Ultimate as OS in this machine. Following is my system configuration: Intel Xeon E5620, 2.4GHz processor/12M Cache, 5.86GT/S, QPI, Turbo, HT, 4C Intel 5520 Chipset 12GB DDR3 RDIMM Memory,1333MHz, ECC Three 600GB (15000rpm) SAS HardDrives Perc6/i SAS/SATA Harware RAID card All SAS Drives, RAID 5, 3 drive configuration BlueRayBurner1GB PCIe X16 nVidia Quadro FX3800 ,Dual monitor DP+1 DVI Capable I am in a little bit strife on this. I am in a little bit strife on this and Open for any good and effective suggestions are much appreciated. Thanks Nathapushpa

You even have three more connectors free on your Perc controller, so you could add three more disks, without using any motherboard connectors.
I think you have two alternative approaches:
1. Add a smallish disk as a boot disk, i.e. a 150 GB Velociraptor and install OS and programs there and let your raid5 exist as it is, or
2. Add another 600 GB to your raid5 to make it a four disk array.
Of course you could also do both. Breaking the raid out to individual disks means that all data on the current raid will be lost, unless you have a backup available, but it will still mean a fresh install of OS & programs, so remember to deactivate Adobe before you do anything to your disk setup like in alternative 1 or breaking out the array.

Workaround for Hardware Raid-Card and Bootcamp

I have ordered my new Mac Pro with the optional raid-card by Apple. Since there are no drivers for Windows XP or Vista available, harddrives attached to the card cannot be used for bootcamp to boot from. But it seems the Apple ships teh new Mac Pros with all drive bays connected to the raid-card. I was wondering if i could bypass the card by detaching one of the SATA-cables and plug it into the mainboard directly to use the first (or last) drive bay for a separate boot drive (WD velociraptor 300 GB) with a partition for Mac OSX 10.5 and Windows XP (each 150 GB) on this drive. I want use the rest of the harddrives attached to the RAID-card for a raid 0 under Mac OSX only. Windows XP will use an external storage case connected by Firewire 800.

Hi,
I believe the iPass cable connects all four hard disks with a single connector. This makes it difficult to remove one bay from the Apple Card. My experience is that you either use the card for all four bays or you disconnect the card and use the stock motherboard SATA interface.
I found using an external RAID box allows me to have all four internal hard disk bays available for boot disk or boot camp use. The external SeriTek/5PM provides my RAID. I can use the HighPoint RR2314 for a five disk RAID 5 configuration or the Sonnet Tempo E4P if I want a RAID created by Disk Utility. Using multiple SeriTek/5PM enclosures can increase the performance.
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/5pm/
http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata5pm.html
If you want even higher RAID performance and SAS compatibility and don't mind spending more $$$ the HighPoint RocketRAID 4322 RAID 5/6 Controller provides amazing performance with the Enhance RS16 JS SAS expander enclosure. The AMUG tests show this combination can provide RAID 6, sixteen disk average write performance of 696MB/sec. and 833MB/sec. read performance.
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/4322/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/enhance/rs16js/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/datoptic/rm16_ex8/
There are lots of RAID solutions available for the Mac Pro. However, I find the internal Apple RAID lack of Boot Camp support is too restrictive and higher performance is available from 3rd party solutions at a better performance to cost ratio.
Have fun!

3rd Party RAID Card options - must make a decision

I've been on the Mac with NLE for high end corporate work since early 90's but only now moving from a 10 bit uncompressed SD edit suite to FCP and I need your valued feedback for a Mac Pro arriving soon. I've spent hours poring over all forums, Apple and otherwise, to select the right raid solution. The situation is that we will edit NTSC into 2009 and make the transition to HD later in the year. So, the initial set-up will be three 1 TB Seagate 7200.11's with a 320GB for O/S (and perhaps more in optical bay for scratch, etc.) I prefer to install the three video drives internally and go with a hardware driven card (Raid 5) that also provides support for external drives if we add later. Caldigit's is the only card that appears to cover all the misc. requirements but the forums list issues with 3rd party storage vs Caldigit's box. Other cards have pros and cons so I'm asking you to tell me what is working in your shop and also whether I should just purchase a 3rd party external enclosure and set up the Seagates there. If so, card recommendation is also critical.

Hi,
I find installing a RAID 5 inside the Mac Pro has too many limitations. I would rather keep the boot drive in its own internal bay and be able to mount a boot camp disk or other backup disks internally when needed.
A better solution for most users is to mount the RAID 5 externally. The FirmTek SeriTek/5PM enclosure and the HighPoint RocketRAID 2314 combination provides a high quality external RAID 5 solution that is quiet, fast and dependable. You can learn more about it here:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/5pm/
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-5pm/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/2314/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000NAXGIU/arizomacinusergr
There are other solutions that work well too. However, the controllers tend to be much more expensive. RAID 5 users looking for a quality solution at a very reasonable price will find the SeriTek/5PM and RR2314 combination works well.
If you don't mind paying more the Areca ARC-1680ix-12 SAS controller reviewed by AMUG is another high performance option that works well with SATA direct connect enclosures. You can read more about it here:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/areca/1680ix12/
Have fun!

3rd Party SATA raid cards for internal drives?

All --
Apart from the discussion as to if RAID actually benefits a home desktop system, I am wondering if anyone has the lowdown on using 3rd party SATA raid cards to support the INTERNAL hard drives on the Mac Pro series?
My Mac Pro is still slated to be built at Apple and for now I have the minimum memory and HD spec being requested at Apple, with the plan to upgrade the memory and drives from OWC or another vendor.
I've toyed with the idea of utilizing Disk Utility's software RAID features (e.g. RAID 0 for scratch disks, RAID 1 for boot, RAID 0+1 for all else.) I've also toyed with the notion of searching for a hardware raid solution which would allow me to transfer the internal SATA cable runs from the motherboard to a host adapter card for an internal multi-channel experience (with options to create and break mirrors to external devices for backup purposes.)
So....
Has anyone experience or utilized 3rd party hardware raid controllers which can connect to the internal HD bays? Are there limitations to this (ie, does the boot drive HAVE to reside off the internal motherboard controllers, or can an internal hardware controller successfully boot the system) of which ought be noted?
Finally, in the event that a host adapter card cannot drive the interna bays, can anyone give feedback to hardware SATA cards to power external drive bays with support for Disk Utility (to allow RAID1 pairings of internal drives to external snapshot-backup drives)?
Thanks for your time,
Ian Poulin
Richmond, Va

I am wondering if anyone has the lowdown on using 3rd party SATA raid cards to support the INTERNAL hard drives on the Mac Pro series?
There are many 3rd party controllers that support the internal HDs if an internal iPass connector is used. The problem is that some are bootable but most are not.
The Areca ARC-1680ix-12 and the HighPoint RocketRAID 4320 are bootable. However, the system cannot be installed via the Apple DVD. Instead the user needs to clone a boot drive with the proper drivers to the boot volume on the controller and then boot from the 3rd party controller.
The other issue I found is that these controllers do not support Boot Camp. If Boot Camp is desired, my recommendation would be to leave the internal HDs on the Mac Pro internal bus intact and use the 3rd party controller for external storage. This method provides four internal bays that are bootable, support Boot Camp and can be used for system backups. I use the 3rd party controller for external storage for large RAID sets and hot swapping hard disks.
With the internal bays intact and external hot swap RAID storage available the user can support Boot Camp, multiple system volumes and large external RAID sets. From my experience using a 3rd party controller with the internal HD bays always has some limitations. The user usually does not realize it unit later when Boot Camp does not work or the computer fails on a system upgrade or the controller does not work at all with a new version of Mac OS X.
Staying with the standard internal Mac Pro bay configuration will be the best configuration to avoid compatibility issues with future versions of Mac OS X. It is rumored that the new Snow Leopard may require 64-bit drivers. If that is the case, I would expect most if not all existing 3rd party controller drivers to fail. Some drivers will be upgraded after a few months while others may not. Having the internal Mac Pro SATA controller intact should at least allow the Mac Pro to boot if my guess about compatibility issues is correct.
can anyone give feedback to hardware SATA cards to power external drive bays with support for Disk Utility (to allow RAID1 pairings of internal drives to external snapshot-backup drives)?
There are a large number of external controllers that work with Disk Utility. Here are some of my favorites.
1. FirmTek SeriTek/2SE2-E and the SeriTek/5PM
http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata5pm2se2.html
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/5pm/
2. Sonnet Tempo E4P
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/sonnet/mac-pro/
3. DAT Optic eSATA_PCIe8
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/datoptic/pcie8/
Have fun!

Best option for RAID 5 with 4 drives?

I have been thinking about doing a RAID 5 setup with 4 1TB drives.
My motherboard has enough intel SATA ports to run one through its chipset, but I've heard that can be problematic and wont perform as well.
What would be the best budget option for a small RAID? Are there any affordable RAID cards out there that would fit my needs? I could probably part with $300 for a card. I'll get 4 WD RE4 drives for the raid.
I will have a backup of this data so that's not a problem.

Hi Paul,
Areca ARC-1320-8i seems like the best option - or a variation of it (like ARC-1320-4i4x) - as long as you get four internal ports. It's right around $300.
That said, some of my clients run Intel RST RAID5 on four drives for some time, and it actually performs well:
(Personally I think software and hybrid RAIDs are the future of RAID technology: much more flexible than hardware RAID; potentially faster as well given that they have access to all of computer resources rather than just a dedicated processor. The latest iteration of RST, for example, allow SSDs for caching of RAID volumes.)
For my personal system, I use a $200 CineRAID H458 box with four Hitachi Deskstars in RAID5, which is a very inexpensive option for an external RAID:
Sure, it's rather slow; fast enough for my purposes though, and is highly portable, unlike any config with an internal RAID controller.
If I need something seriously faster (yet on a budget), I'd use something like this:

PCI ATA 133 RAID Card VS. PCI ATA 133 Controller Card

Hello,
I just bought a 300gb HD to put into my QS. I know I need to add another ATA card, but I noticed in stores there is a PCI ATA 133 RAID and a PCI ATA 133 Controller card.
What is the difference? The ATA 133 Raid card I saw is considerably cheaper. Can I use it to run my 300Gb drive as my startup drive (iDVD issues!)?
Thanks for your help.

Additional question: I have seen that there are a number of issues with SATA II drives in the early G5. Can you recommend a drive in the 500 GB range that would work well in the Dual 1.8 GHz? A SATA II would be a good option for the future... Thanks!

SAS H/Drives & a RAID card !

Question.
I am hoping to get a Mac Pro for work in the Spec' I want a SAS H/Drive in bay 1 & in bay 2 either another SAS H/D or a standard 500Gb, 7200rpm H/D. Can someone explain why I have to get a RAID card as well. I'm not thinking or Raiding these 2 ( I know to RAID I have to have the same H/D's ).
I ask because everytime I config' my Mac Pro in the store on-line I always get a message telling me I need to get the card as well.
Anyone know why and do I need a card.
Steve

SATA drives require a SATA controller and the Mac Pro has one built into the computer, SAS drives need a SCSI controller which the computer does not have built in so you must get a RAID card for the computer to see and control the drives. Don't worry it's worth it if you want lightning fast drives

Mac PRo with raid card shipped with drive not suitable for raid?

Hi all,
I ordered a Mac Pro with raid card and a 1TB hard drive. The drive which came in the computer was WDC WD1001FALS which is not a hard drive rated for raid usage. On Western Digital's site they suggest using WD1002FBYS.
Is the model WD1001FALS the correct drive which Apple ships although one ordered the raid card?

The WD 640GB Blue, and WD 1TB Black are the only drive options for the mac pro; that's what you choose.
The RE3 (or FBYS) is not an option sold through apple. Buying the raid card, is not going to change the drive.
On whether to use the RE3 over the Blacks, it depends on how you will be using it. From what I've heard, the Blacks are enterprise drives themselves; basically with just a less robust firmware (no TLER). If you will have the drives on 24/7 in a raid 5, then yes, RE3 will probably be better. If not, I think the black will suffice; note the blacks are GREAT drives by themselves anyway.
The apple raid card can connect to both SATA and SAS drives internally, however most times people buying the raid card want to use it for SAS drives. There are a lot more cheaper and possibly a lot more stable options then apple's raid card if you are looking to use SATA drives.
Check amug:
http://www.amug.org/
A common problem with the apple raid card is the battery:
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MA849Z/B?mco=NDc1ODczNw
Lastly about enterprise drives, truthfully I don't see the difference really. I have enterprise drives in a 8-drive raid5 config running 24/7 as a server. 2 drives died on me after about 4 months. To top it off, they died within 10 min of each other, crushing the raid to pieces. Granted they were Seagate ES.2's, it's understandable
The boot drive of the server is a stock desktop WD drive and running 24/7. It's been running for almost 4 years straight.

Why no RAID options for new disks?

Hi support group,
"My name is Shaun, and I am a mac-aholic"
I inserted 4 new 3TB disks into the bays of my Mac Pro (2012), and there is no RAID option for them.
How I got here:
Inserted the WD Red drives, and they were not initiated.
I "erased" the drives, gave them names, and they appear in Disk Utility in grey drives.
Went to set up the RAID, and move the drives into the RAID, but got an error that they could not be used.
It appears to me that disk utility is not allowing me to fully use those drives. I Have created RAID drives before with no issue in RAID1 with 3TB drives before on this machine. Am perplexed, I thought this to be the easy and simple part of my upgrade odyssey! Did I screw up the initialization? On all FOUR drives?
Now, if I click on the drives, the RAID option does not present itself.
FWIW, I am using OS X 10.9.5, on Mac Pro 5,1. I boot from PCIe card. My end goal is to create a 4-disk RAID 10 using the four SATA connections on the MP.

It was really pretty simple based on your feedback, I powered down, removed the drives from the SATA backplane, moved each drive separately to the USB enclosure, then re-"erased" in OSX-Etended. I ejected each drive when finished, and moved to the next one until all four were re-"erased". Then I restarted the Mac with all four in the SATA connections, and all four were visible and had the RAID option tab. I created the three RAID schemes (two stripe and one mirror), and dragged the drives into the RAID option. Then I hit "create" or some other command to finish the RAID.
Note that I did get an error on the RAID creation. From memory, this was "cannot create RAID without an unmounted disk" or something like that. I cleared the error, and then opened back up Disk Utility. All the RAIDs were listed, and were operational with the green "On" signal. I could read/write/transfer from the RAID. Once I transfer the data to this RAID, I will work on a way to test it, but if any risk to the data, I might just leave well enough alone.
For now, it seems I have a fully functional RAID 1+0 using the four HDD on the SATA connections in my Mac Pro 5,1.

RAID Card/SAS Controller Options for MacPro1,1

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