Raiding Mac Pro Internal Drives

I have a Mac Pro 2008 edition, I need fast performance of my internal drives. I could use 2 of my 1 TB installed drives and raid them.
I am not after security of data (I use a drobo for that) but I need fastest performance for video editing. (Encoding) The more I search the web, the more answers I get.
Hope to get the best advice here in this Forum.
Thank you
Dorian

Then those are not really suitable, they are probably green models.
Not that hard to move your data, or to invest in enterprise WD Black 2TB or Hitachi Ultrastars.
The boot drive can be small and lean but fast SSD or WD 10K VelociRaptor. Or 2-3 raided together.
http://macperformanceguide.com/index_topics.html
Desktop Hard Drives
Optimizing your Mac: Fast Hard Drive or SSD
How to upgrade your system/boot drive
Buyer's Guide: Hard Drives for Mac Pro
Mac Boot Drive Dogma
Upgrading Mac Pro Internal Drives

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Problems installing windows on a clean Mac Pro internal drive - issues and questions

Hey,
I have a Mac Pro mid 2010 with the following drive configurations:
3x120GB SSD in a RAID-0 as Boot (OS X 10.8.6) and SSD Scratch (working files)
3x4TB HDD in a RAID-0 as Master (data) and HDD Scratch (downloads)
1x100GB SSD (Spare...to install windows on)
I have literally tried every possible way of installing Windows 8 on that single SSD...both using bootcamp and without.
I can get it installed and working, install all the drivers/updates/software...involving multiple reboots into windows. Everything seems fine, and i shut down and boot into OS X, which works perfectly as expected. BUT, when i try and boot into Windows again (using <option> key at startupand selecting the windows volume, called "EFI Boot" which i did not name) I can log in and start using apps and then 20-40 seconds later i get the BSOD.
I can't for the life of me figure out why.
It's the easiest thing in the world to partition a single OSX drive to boot windows ON THE SAME DRIVE, but i can't seem to boot stably into a standaloe internal drive.
NOTE: I prepare the Windows drive by formatting the entire thing to "Free Space" using disk utility in Mac OS X, and can see that there are no partitions (EFI or otherwise) on the drive. Then I pull all the other drives except the target drive, reboot with a Windows 8 USB drive (created by BootCamp Assistant on my macbook air, because apparently some genius thought that task was too complicated for a Mac Pro...jks) and install from there. The funny part is that i can pick out the target drive in the windows setup, it's registering as 1 disk/partition of UNALLOCATED SPACE, as expected, but there is a warming that windows cannot be installed on this drive because my computer does not support booting to this disk, and that i should check that it's controller is enabled in the BIOS.....which to the best of my knowledge is not used by intel-macs, which use UEFI. But i can still click "Next", so I do and install Windows and boot to this drive, restarting and installing software updates and drivers as mentioned above.
The BSOD seems to pop up only after i've rebooted to Mac OS X and then try to go BACK to Windows 8.
The version of windows 8 and install USB were checked using my macbook air, and they work flawlessly. ASLO that warning about not being able to boot to the drive during windows setup isn't present.
I'm wondering if the fact the the RAID volumes are a software RAID, using Disk Utility in OSX is causing windows some issues...which makes no sense.
I'll keep playing, but I'm not confident I'm ever going to find a solution.
Somebody be my hero...

Hey Hatter,
Another question for you:
I can't seem to use system preferences>>startup disk to boot into windows. When I select windows and then restart i get a black "BIOS-like" screen which then cuts out and a message is displayed that says "there is no bootable disc"
This stumped me, because I know i can boot into windows from the boot screen (holding down option and selecting "EFI Boot" which apparently is what my windows drive is called.
because of my Mac OSX Raid arrays, i had to install windows by formatting a drive to HFS+ (GUID) pratition table, then repartition to "Free Space" then using an install usb that i made with my macbook air, pull all my other drives and install by selecting the usb drive to boot from.
I went into disk utility to see if I can repair the disk, and disk utility says that the disk has to EFI partition and that we won;t be able to boot from it....which is very confusing because i can boot from it.
Windows 8 apparentl;y uses UEFI from my research....so i'm utterly stumped.
I beleive this is also the cause of my newly purchased graphics card Mac Edition HD 7950, throwing me a BSOD when i select to boot in windows from the boot menu...
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Mac Pro internal drive problems

Hi there,
I bought a Mac Pro in October last year for business use and it's been going fine until about a month ago.
I have two internal drives and one of them was making a terrible THUNK! noise, powering down, then trying to start again - you can hear it spinning, not quiet getting there, then spinning again. When this happens, the machine hangs, sometimes until the drive gets back on it's feet, other times I need to do a hard restart. 50% of the time the machine will not start at all. ( gets to gray apple screen and goes nowhere)
It seems to be the boot drive that the machine shipped with that's causing the problems as Disk Utility keeps finding erros on it. When I repair it, the machine works fine for a while until, when I'm working away, suddenly THUNK! and everything starts over again! Also, my bluetooth mouse and keyboard seems to be palying up too, but I don't know if this is related.
I'm tearing my hair out and I need to edit some video on it for work soon, but this seems like it's going to be impossible if the drive keeps stopping like this!
Any advice would be much appreciated!
David Newbigging
Mac Pro 2.66 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Definitely get the backups current, an external FW would be nice to have too so you have it off line.
I zero every drive before using. It is possible that there are bad blocks. Which, according to a Google report, means it is likely to fail anyway. But zero the drive may be enough. Or 7way write erase.
Or use Windows and the vendor disk utility (which seem to be limited to DOS or Windows, even Vista has one) to recertify the drive.
I would buy a drive now, and try to get it replaced.
A severely corrupted directory can cause a drive to sound like it is in the death throes of failing.
Do you have Disk Warrior 4? have you installed Applejack? used Single User Mode and run fsck to repair the drive?
And have you already setup a 2nd boot drive? always essential to have an emergency boot drive; a working backup drive; and your main boot drive.
If a drive is going to fail, make it early on.
There are tools like Intech Speedtools to test and remap bad blocks. I always test and torture test a drive for a few days before trusting it.

Mac Pro Internal Drive randomly disappears on boot up

I have a nearly two year old Mac Pro and the non boot internal hard drive has started to randomly not appear. When it doesn't show up, I have to boot the machine from the Leopard DVD to get it to reappear. I run the disk utility and it shows no problems.
What is happening and how can I prevent this from reoccuring?

Hi H_Factor73,
I have a very similar situation happen to me a little while back. In my case, I should have been more alert. I had to much faith in risking not backing everything of that particular HDD up. The entire disappearing act was a warning that it was failing but I thought all would be fine anyway. It kept pulling the disappearing act randomly and coming back from time to time. I don't know how it happened or what the culprit was or why but one of the HDD failed big time in the end...
I tried Disk Warrior for recovery which worked wonders the first time for me. To make a long story short, the HDD in question died and I did lose some data. I brought it back to the local vender who was very understanding and I got a complete refund. I got lucky. I since bought an extra external HDD (same brand which was Western Digital) and ALL my data is backed up now. Good luck finding your answers. I just thought I'd put in my 2 cents' worth.
Rio.

Brtand New Mac Pro Internal Optical Drive Won't Work

Actually, this is a two parter. My new Mac Pro internal optical drive rejects every disk I insert. It won't read anything. Should I get it replaced? Part two: I have an external Sony optical drive which was working up until yesterday. Today, I was going to go through some disks and now THAT drive is rejecting everything. I had it connected via USB and changed it to a 400 to 800 firewire. I tried to read some disks again and still they get rejected. What can I do to correct these problems?

I am having the exact same problem with my mac pro since upgrading to 10.5.7 neither of my drives will read CD or DVD and it states that no burning software was found in the system profiler

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!

Hardware RAID connecting to internal drives

I've decided to get a RocketRAID 3520, but I have one issue I need resolving before going ahead.
I want to connect 3 of my internal drives in a RAID 5 and in the near future expand with external drives.
How do I connect the SATA cable to each drive when they are in their respective slots, I need to use the Mac Pro to power the drives but need to disconnect them from the Mac Pro SATA connectors and connect to the new RAID card.
But the internal drive trays seem too make this impossible, but people must have done this?

I've decided to get a RocketRAID 3520, but I have one issue I need resolving before going ahead.
Hi,
I would not recommend the RocketRAID 3520 internal configuration for the Mac Pro. To connect the HighPoint controller to the Mac Pro internal SATA bays you would need an iPass adapter. This would disconnect all 4-bays from the Apple SATA interface and connect them to the HighPoint interface.
The next version of Mac OS X is rumored to only support 64-bit drivers. My bet is that most controller drivers including HighPoint will fail in a 64-bit only Mac OS environment. It will take some time for new drivers to be developed and tested. Staying with the boot disk on the Apple on-board SATA controller will provide compatibility with any upgrade.
I would stay with the more compatible Apple mother board for internal disks and use a 3rd party controller for external RAID sets.
The HighPoint RocketRAID 2314 and the SeriTek/5PM enclosure makes a great combination for an external five disk RAID 5 configuration that can provide over 220MB/sec. even when the RAID is 90% full. You can read more about these items here:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/2314/
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000NAXGIU/arizomacinusergr
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/5pm/
http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata5pm.html
FirmTek has a special Black Friday sale going on until Monday. It is the best deal I have ever seen on FirmTek product. You can see the details here:
http://www.firmtek.com/
Have fun!

Mac Pro Hard Drive Connectors

I need to replace the two screws that hold the hard drive connectors to the Mac Pro.
Does anyone know where I can begin to find these? They are two small black screws.
The previous owner of my Mac Pro removed them so that he could attach an SSD drive loosely to the Mac Pro.
I'm going to replace the SSD drive, as it failed, and it comes with a 3.5" tray that should attach to the Mac Pro hard drive carrier, but when I push it back in to align up with the hard drive connector, since he removed the screws, it doesn't align up and go in without me manually connecting it. I'd like to get it back to the way it was with the screws.
So...I wonder what part number that is or how I can get those two little screws, the exact ones?
Any advice would be great.
Thanks.

ChrisMc73 wrote:
Yeah there are two models for this Icy Dock SSD Kit...I think I want the screwless version.
MB882SP-1S-2B - uses screws to mount the drive and has more ventilation for a moving parts 2.5" drive
MB882SP-1S-1B - is screwless and is meant more for SSD drives
I use the screwless version.
As for dvwearhouse and others, unless you know the part number, how do you know where to look?

Is it ok to switch my mac pro boot drive to port 4?

hi, my brand new mac pro hard drive is kind of loud. is it ok to switch my main drive to port 4 farther back in the computer?
will it be slower?
thanks so much!

There will likley be no discernable difference.
If you do not have a drive in the first bay, it may change the airflow slightly, as it will no longer act as a dam to improve the airflow of the intake fan.

Where can I find Mac Pro Hard Drive Holder?

Where can I find Mac Pro Hard Drive Holder? Only 4 came withe the computer and I need some more.
Anybody knows where I could buy some?
Thanks

http://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=2705

Why my Mac Pro hard drive noise and too slow?

Why my Mac Pro hard drive noise and too slow? Totally 8 gb speed system but now very slow . Please give some suggestions

Another thing you can do in Lion (and ML) is click on the "Info" button in Disk Utility to get the SMART status of the drive.It's more detailed now than it used to be and it might tell you if something is wrong.
A lot can go wrong with a hard drive which is why I tend to point people to the downloads section of the following web site:
http://scsc-online.com
They have a free hard drive troublleshooting download book there. I reccommend people download that before asking questionis because there are tons of problems that can act like hard drive problems when there's nothing wrong with the system at all. For example, how full is the drive? How many applications are running? What's the status of Spotlight indexing? How many apps are you running? How much memory do you have?
I could probably think up 20 or 30 more if needed.

Mac Pro Internal Hard Drive Raid and Size

I have out grown hard drive storage space on my Mac Pro. Currently, I have a 300 Gig system drive and 500Gig Scratch Drive. I am considering purchasing two 1000Gig drives because I could use a very large volume of video storage.
I would think that an internal SATA drive has a better read when compared to a FireWire/USB 2.0 Drive
In addition I want to RAID the two 1000Gig drives to increase my read/write speed and provide some measure of redundancy.
Any Suggestions as to type of RAID, how to format and create the RAID.
Also any suggestions as to brand of drive to purchase.

http://www.kenstone.net/discussions/read.php?3,1675,1675#msg-1675
-DH

How to take Auto backup from External Network Drive to Mac pro internal Dri

Hi,
I have a External Network Drive (Buffalo 1TB) which i use as a server, now i need to take auto backup from that external drive to the Mac i am working on, which has 2TB Internal hard Disk.
Please could anyone help me on this.....
Thanks in advance

If you are looking to actually integrate what you have on the external one terabyte hard drive with the 2 TB hard drive you're using inside the Mac the best move for you if you want access to that data when using the Mac Pro server is going into utilities click on the top bar where it says go fall that down to the utilities told them that folder quickly once you are there you will see migration assistant click on that you will be asked to type your admin password to that. It will ask you "how do you want to transfer your information" then select from a Time machine backup or other disk when it asks you will be transferring information to your Mac Pro from your 1 Tb backup external hard drive once it's finished eject the drive or reformat it and use it again if your objective was to infect keep compress the data on the external so you have more space but do not have access to it I strongly recommend Carbon Copy Clone 3.3.1 is 100% free and does a fantastic job here is the link http://www.pure-mac.com/downloads/carboncopyclonerdl.html of copying every block to create an exact replica of your source hard drive. If you want something different and don't mind paying SuperDuper! is a great product as well this WebSite will have many options I would stick to carbon copy clone http://www.pure-mac.com/backup.html I also like EMC Retrospect backup and recovery software for the Mac it is a great product but very much on the expensive side for backup utilities although if you need word offers this might be right up your alley.
I hope I wasn't help,
Sincerely,
Thomas

Inserted my Mac Pro hard drives into a RAID enclosure accidentally... help!

Hi guys,
I am regular member of the Logic Pro forum, but am hoping for some help regarding a fairly large data loss disaster.
I have recently sold my Mac Pro tower, in favour of a new iMac, and prior to selling I removed my two additional audio hard drives from the Mac Pro. Unfortunately these were only backed up a year ago (and now my slackness has come back to bite me!), and since then a fair bit of audio work has been completed in Logic Pro.
My plan was to access the hard drives' content on my iMac using a dual-HD USB3 hard drive enclosure. I purchased the ORICO 3529 NAS series, which, while having RAID functionality, I also understood could be used simply as a dual drive unit for normal access of two drives.
So when I got the ORICO unit, I put my two audio drives into it, and plugged into the iMac. I expected to see my drives, but instead I got the message "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer". I had switched the ORICO to JBOD mode, but possibly not prior to initially powering up the unit - which it appears defaults to RAID mode.
I have since tried the HDs in another single enclosure, as well as putting them in a friend's Mac Pro, and in both cases each disk brings up the same error.
It appears I have somehow formatted these drives to be part of a RAID setup, just by putting them in the RAID unit. I am not sure whether this means that all my data is lost, or whether instead it means that the directory or some other part of the file structure or format have been damaged and need to be re-built. While I am a competent computer user in a music context (using Pro Tools and Logic Pro), I am by no means a programmer, and am not really sure where to go from here.
Two of the very helpful regulars on the Logic Pro forum have advised me that potentially a tool like DiskWarrior might help recover the data, although as we went through some additional troubleshooting, they have since suggested that DiskWarrior may not be the solution, and instead I should talk to a RAID specialist about how to recover some of the data on these disks.
So on that note I thought I would put it out here for any Mac users who might be experienced with RAID and willing to make any recommendations. In the meantime I am not going to try to use any tools (like DiskWarrior) in case they cause more harm when in fact I should be seeking out a RAID expert to work on the solution with me.
If you have any thoughts or have had an experience similar (if you are as silly as me!), I would be grateful for any suggestions you might be able to offer.
Cheers and thanks!
Mike

Also, first thing is don't touch change or modify. Disconnect and get them off line.
The first program that can probably help, http://www.SoftRAID.com - their demo (the support they give is probably worth the cost too). Alsoft Disk Warrior support - even remote login - also can be excellent if or when needed.
SoftRAID 'takes over" the Apple RAID and can do wonders.
What you have is an external device with its own built-in bridge and probably a switch (mirror, stripe, JBOD, None).
You need to get them in a case that has no built in bridge or RAID of its own. A Mac Pro would be excellent.
See what OWC has in external cases. http://www.macsales.com/firewire ( a good place to start looking at any type of external interface for storage)

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?

Raiding Mac Pro Internal Drives

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