TS140 and adding a RAID card

Howdy,
I have the i3 version of the TS140. No HDD included with it and has software RAID. I have since attempted to add a IBM 5015 RAID card to the system so I can have RAID recognized by ESXi. I have cross flashed the RAID with the LSI 9260 firmware.
The problem I am having is that the RAID card does not see any hard drives. The system boots up and the firmware comes up. I go into the RAID configuration for the LSI card and it shows no HDDs. Is this a problem with the TS140 BIOS somehow? Ive tried many settings and many different harddrives. All with the same result. Ive disabled the TS140's RAID/sata controller also.
I am on the latest TS140 firmware and have also tried the LSI 9260 firmware on the Lenovo site. Same result of not seeing any drives through the RAID cards interface.
Any help much appreciated.
Thanks
Doug

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Adding a RAID card to help speed up export (and other drive question) in Premiere Pro CC

First of all, I have read Tweakers Page exporting section because that is where my primary concern is. First my questions, then background and my current and proposed configurations:
Question 1: Will adding a hardware RAID controller, such as an LSI MegaRAID remove enough burden from the CPU managing parity on my software RAID 5 that the CPU will jump for joy and export faster?
Question 2: If true to above, then compare thoughts on adding more smaller SSDs for either a one volume RAID 0 or smaller two volume RAID 0 to complement existing HDD RAID 5. That is, I'm thinking of buying four Samsung 850 Pro 128 GB SSDs to put in a four disk volume to handle everything (media/projects, media cache, previews, exports), or split it up into two volumes of two disks each and split the duties, or keep the four disk volume idea and put the previews & exports on my HDD RAID 5 array.
The 850's are rated at SEQ read/write: 550/470 MB/s thus I could get around 2000/1500 MB/s read write in a four disk RAID 0 or 1/2 that if I split into two volumes to minimize volumes from reading/writing at the same time, if that really matters with these SSDs?
The Tweaker's page made a few comments. One is splitting duties among different disks, rather than a large efficient RAID may actually slow things down. Since the SSDs are much faster than a single HDD, I'm thinking that is no longer accurate, thus I'm leaning toward the Four disk configuration putting OS & Programs on C drive, Media & Projects on D (HDD RAID 5), Pagefile & Media Cache on SSD (2-disk RAID 0) and Previews &Exports on 2nd SSD RAID 0 (or combine the two RAID 0's and their duties).
Just trying to get a perspective here, since I haven't purchased anything yet. Any experience/stories, I would appreciate.
My current drive configuration:
My D drive is software RAID 5 consisting of four 1 TB Western Digital RE4 (RED) 7200 RPM HDDs with a CrystalDiskMark SEQ Read/Write of 339/252 MB/s.
The C drive is SSD 500 GB (Samsung 840 (not Pro) and does 531/330 MB/s. My OS, Program Files and Page File are on C, and data/media files/project, etc all are on the RAID drive.
Problem:
Current setup allows for smooth editing, only the exporting seems slow, often taking between two and two and a half times the video length to export. Thus a 10 minute video takes 20-30 minutes to export. 15 minute video can take 30-40 minutes to export. The first 10% of the two-pass export takes under a minute (seems fast), but it gets slower where the final 10 or 20% can hang for many minutes like my system is running out of steam. So where is the waste?
I have enabled hardware acceleration (did the GPU hack since my GPU isn't listed) and it may spike at 25% usage a few times and eat up 600 MB of VRAM (I have 2 GB of VRAM), otherwise it is idle the whole export. The CPU may spike at 50% but it doesn't seem overly busy either.
Our timeline is simple with two video streams and two audio streams (a little music and mostly voice) with simple transitions (jump cuts or cross dissolves). We sometimes fast color correct, so that might use the GPU? Also, since we film in 1080 60P and export 1080 29.97 frames/sec, I think that is scaling and uses the GPU. I know without the GPU, it does take a lot longer. I have ruled out buying a faster GPU since it doesn't appear to be breaking a sweat. I just need to know if my system is bottlenecked at the hard drive level because I'm using software RAID and my disks are slow and will hardware RAID significantly reduce the CPU load so it can export faster.
Our files are not huge in nature. Most our clips are several MBs each. Total project files are between 5 GBs and 10 GBs for each video with Windows Media File export being 500 MB to 1.2 GB on average. We shoot using Panasonic camcorders so the original files are AVCHD, I believe (.MTS files?).
Considerations:
1. I'm thinking of buying (and future proofing) an LSI Logic MegaRAID 9361-8i that is 12Gb/s SAS and SATA (because some current SSDs can exceed the 6Gb/s standard).
2. I'm not replacing my current RAID 5 HDDs because not in my budget to upgrade to 6 or more large SSDs. These drives are more important to me for temporary storage because I remove the files once backed up. I don't mind a few inexpensive smaller SSDs if they can make a significant difference for editing and exporting.
I can only guess my HDD RAID is slow but the CPU is burdened with parity. I would imagine running RAID 10 would not help much.
My setup:
my setup:
CPU - i7-3930K CPU @4.5 GHz
RAM - G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3 2133 @2000
Motherboard - ASUS P9X79 WS LGA 2011
GPU - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 OC 2GB (performed the compatibility list hack to enable hardware acceleration).
C drive - 500 GB Samsung 840 SSD (Windows 7 Pro 64 bit and programs).
D drive - four 1 TB WD RE4 Enterprise HDDs 7200 RPMs in software RAID 5
Case - Cooler Master HAF X
CPU Fan - Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO with 120 mm fan
Power Supply - Corsair Pro Series AX 850 Watt 80 Plus Gold
Optical Drive - Pioneer BDR - 208DBK
thanks in advance,
Eric

........software RAID 5 off the motherboard ??????......NOT a good idea, from what I have read here on this forum from experts like Harm Millard and others. They have mentioned a LARGE overhead on the CPU doing this....causing sub-par performance. RAID 0 off the motherboard will NOT do this, however.....RAID 0 would provide optimum speed, but, with the risk of total data loss if ANY drive fails. You may wish to reconfigure your RAID to be RAID 0...BUT...you would need to DILIGENTLY back up its entire volume onto perhaps a quality 4TB drive very frequently.
A lot depends on the nature of your current and FUTURE codecs you plan to edit. You may not want to sink a lot of money into an older setup that may have trouble with more demanding future codecs. For now, in the 1080p realm, your rig should be OK....the read/write performance on your CURRENT RAID 5 setup is not great, and a definite drag on the performance. The rest of your components appear to be fine.....the Samsung SSD, though not ideal, is OK.....it's write speed is WAY lower than the Pro model,but, the drive is used mainly for reading operations. Since you have Windows 7 Pro, and NOT Windows 8.......you CAN put the entire windows page file onto the RAID 0 you might create.....this will take that frequent read/write load OFF the SSD. Read the "tweakers Page" to see how to best TUNE your machine. To use your current setup most efficiently, without investing much money, you would :a. create the RAID 0 off the motherboard, ( putting all media and project files on it ) b. install a quality 7200rpm 4TB HDD to serve as a BACKUP of the RAID array. Then, install a Crucial M550 256GB or larger SSD, ( close in performance to Samsung 850 Pro...much cheaper), to put all previews, cache , and media cache files on....AND to use as " global performance cache" for After Effects...if you use that program. Exporting can be done to ANOTHER Crucial M550 for best speed...or, just to the either the FIRST Crucial or, the 4TB drive. Your current GPU will accelerate exports on any video containing scaling and any GPU accelerated effects. Your CPU is STILL important in SERVING the data to and from the GPU AND for decoding and encoding non-GPU handled video....your high CPU clock speed helps performance there ! You may want to check out possibly overclocking your video card, using MSI Afterburner.or, similar free program. Increasing the "memory clock speed" can RAISE performance and cut export times on GPU effects loaded timelines,or, scaling operations. On my laptop, I export 25% faster doing this. With my NEW i7 4700 HQ laptop, I export in the range of your CURRENT machine....about 2 to 3 times the length of the original video. PROPERLY SET UP...your desktop machine should BLOW THIS AWAY !!
Visit the PPBM7 website and test your current setup to possibly identify current bottlenecks,or, performance issues. THEN, RE-TEST it again, after making improvements to your machine to see how it does. Be aware that new codecs are coming (H.265 and HEVC,etc.) which may demand more computer horsepower to edit, as they are even MORE compressed and engineered for "streaming" high quality at a lower bandwidth on the internet. The new Haswell E...with its quad-channel memory, 8 core option, large number of PCI gen. 3 lanes, goes farther in being prepared for 4K and more. Testing by Eric Bowen has shown the newer PPro versions provide MUCH better processing of 4K than older versions.

Mac Pro RAID Card and Western Digital drives

I'm having huge troubles with these items.
I first installed four WD7500AYYS (Raid Edition) to build a RAID 5 and install Leopard on it. At this point, one of the drives was probably DOA and didn't show up in the bay. I then reinstalled the Seagate that shipped with the machine, then proceeded to create another enhanced JBOD raid with one of the WD drives. After a couple of seconds, RAID utility reported an error (disk about to fail and such). I then tried with another one. The process ended with a kernel panic after two hours, while RAID utility was still marking the drive for enhanced JBOD. That disk never show up again, in any bay.
At this point, I'm left with two WD drives. I can't get past the creation of a RAID set with them, no matter what. Either RAID utility reports an error, or it says the disk has been ejected, or it keeps create the RAID for hours... The later usually ends with a "force quit", or a force shutdown. During these attemps, the RAID card went missing once, then it appeared again on the following reboot. The RAID battery, which was fully charged at first, is now being "repaired" (charging ?).
I then ran AHT to see whether there was something wrong. No errors reported.
Because all four drives were Raid Edition, I thought this could be the root of the problems. So I bought a Caviar SE16 (WD5000AAKS). To no avail. It fails too, in the very same way. And now it no longer appears in any bay.
The last step I took was to remove the RAID card (connecting the iPass connector to the motherboard). Out of the five WD drives, only two RE2 (the two that still show up with the RAID card) do appear in disk utility. But disk utility never ends "writing the partition map" or "preparing for initialization".
By now, I end up with five WD drives that appear to be just dead, as if they were killed by the RAID card trying to RAID them. The only drive that works, with or without the RAID card, in any bay, is the Seagate. I didn't try to fiddle with it though (I'm reluctant to format it just to see whether I can create an enhanced JBOD raid with it).
So the question is, are Western Digital drives compatible with this RAID card ? If they do, then how a RAID card can kill them in such a way while keeping the Seagate alive ?
I'm lost in conjectures. I don't even know if/how I can bring all the WD drives back to life. I'm not sure the RAID card is faulty, I've already lost a lot of time and money, I'm not willing to buy yet another drive to see it fail too, and my Mac Pro is kind of useless as I don't want to spend time on installing/configuring everything I need on a drive that is bound to be replaced by a larger RAID 5 array.
Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

Someone yesterday or Friday, had a system with 4 x 1TB drives and Pro RAID, but in their case, it was determined later Saturday that drive bay #1 was not functioning.
Hopefully these fully retail drives, not OEMs, and I would think they are fine. They are what I would use (Sonnet Tempo only supports RE of the WD drives). Someone else, Danish?, had 3 out of 4 WD drives were DOA.
I've never had trouble buying over a dozen from OWC, so it does seem odd.
If you have SoftRAID 3.6.6 I would use that to zero the first and last 100 sectors, or you can begin to zero the whole drive and cancel at any time, just to check the health of the drive and that it can zero and not produce I/O errors.
There are two other methods for accessing and managing Mac Pro RAID, ARD and CLI
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306231
Originally, only Apple drives were supported. My understanding was that this changed. But the only article I found in KB dates back to Aug '07:
Question: What drives does Apple support with the Mac Pro RAID Card and the Xserve RAID Card?
Answer: +Only Apple drives are supported with the Mac Pro RAID Card and the Xserve RAID Card.+
My understanding that 3rd party retail drives such as WD RE2 750GB, Seagate, Hitachi were supported as well since the article was written - and I can't find where I read that, but sure that I did, as this was discussed in the past.
I'd like to find an official article. Even my friend Google was helpless

Apple RAID Card and 3TB Drives only show 2.2 TB

I tried a 3TB Seagate Barracuda XT drive in the July 2010 Mac Pro (and a Jan 2008 Mac Pro) on the RAID Card that came with the machines (so one is the RAID Card now shipping) and both show a maximum of 2.2 TB with a 3TB drive.
I'm curious if anyone else has tried this with different results. Any luck in getting the RAID Card to see the full 3TB in the drives?
By the way, without the RAID Card, the Mac (OS 10.6.4) sees the full 3TB, but not with it.
Anyone else seeing this?

Okay. Seems Apple didn't plan for or certify 3TB.
However, Apple doesn't support using 3rd party drives. Some do, and in some situations, drives you would think work don't, or they work but only briefly.
When I said read FAQ I was thinking of all the points like this:
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
http://www.apple.com/support/macpro/
Apple Knowledge Base: recent changes:
http://support.apple.com/kb/index?page=articles

MacPro2009-Apple Raid Card-2.2TB limit

Hello,
I have a MacPro (early 2009) with an Apple Raid Card. Lion 10.7.4
I just bought a 4 Tb Sata hard drive and there is no way to make it work on the Apple Raid Card. When it mount , it only show a capacity of 2,2 TB and Apple disk Utility is of no utility with it on the Raid Card.
So I managed to hook it in the Optical Drive bay and I have now a 4 TB volume available for Network backup.
Can you confirm the limit on the Apple raid card
Version Matériel: 2,00
Version du programme interne: E-1.3.2.0
Thanks,
Marc LE BRET

I have this same issue with a mid 2010 MacPro Server running 10.8.2/OS X Server (10.8) and the Apple RAID Card with 3 - 1TB drives and an added 4TB drive (in Bay 4) that is only being seen with the 2.2TB limit. I even initialized it and tested it a bit with my MacPro1,1 and a NewerTech toaster on eSata. Very nice to see a workaround with the optical bay... thank you for that suggestion! I was going to go to another enclosure or hard drive "toaster" / dock that allows 4TB drives and use eSata or FW800 as a connection... the 2nd optical drive bay sounds great and will give it a try.
The only thing I can figure from all this and talking to Tier 2 AppleCare is that the RAID card is only 32 Bit addressing O.o ... which seems crazy but makes the most sense. They will more than likely respond with "The drive is unsupported, since it isnt an "Apple" HD."

Removing RAID card from MacPro (2006)

I have a Mac Pro 1,1 (2006) which had been used as a server. It has an Apple RAID card installed (the first version, blue one, part number A1247).
I am now using this computer at home. The RAID card has failed. I'd like to remove it, reformat the drives and use the computer as a non-RAID version.
I have physically removed and unplugged the RAID card from the connector. I reinstalled the hard drives. However, when I boot up off the Snow Leopard Install DVD, Disk Utility cannot find the four hard drives that had previously been plugged into the RAID Card.
Am I missing a step somewhere? Is there more hardware beyond just the RAID card itself I needed to remove, and if so, can someone point me to the instructions on how to do it?
Thanks!
Matt

Just to elabroate on The hatter's post and in case anyone else stumbles upon this thread when searching about removing the Apple RAID card from the Mac Pro (pre-2009), the answer is within the first link in The hatter's post, namely this Apple user guide on installing the RAID card: http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/MacPro_RAIDCard_Installation.pdf
Basically, there's an iPass cable that connects the hard drives to the motherboard - but when you have your Mac configured with an Apple RAID card the iPass cable is connected to the RAID card instead of the motherboard. So when you remove the RAID card you need to connect the iPass cable back to your motherboard and that involves removing the fans, which is a tad fiddly. Make sure you've got a good magnetic screwdriver that doesn't chew screws!
Hope this helps someone out there
I've finally managed to replace my RAID card and dual SAS drives with a Vertex 2 SSD and I'm loving the speed, quietness and most importantly the fact I can now put my Mac Pro to sleep!!

RAID card battery conditioning - "Battery failed (other than expired)"

OK, so if you log-in using the GUI, you get a warning telling you that battery conditioning is happening and that you shouldn't the server.
However, if you log-in over SSH, as you might, for instance, with a headless Xserve, you don't get that warning. And then, if you restart more than a certain number of times, for instance because you're installing all the software updates that the server has missed while it hasn't been switched on, you end up in the following state:
$ raidutil list status
Apple raidutil version: 1.2.0
General Status: Issues Found
Battery fault. See Battery Status below.
Battery Status: Battery failed (other than expired)
Controller #1: Hardware Version 2.00/Firmware E-1.3.2.0
Write Cache disabled
Plainly this is undesirable.
Does anyone know how to reset the battery state, preferably without having to pull the server out of its rack and disconnect the RAID card battery?
Also, since when was it in any way reasonable to tell a user that they can't shut their machine down for 24 hours? Even with a server, that's ridiculous - sometimes you just have to reboot.
Kind regards,
Alastair.

FWIW, I just filed rdar://7653429 about the fact that terminal users don't get any warning of this, and rdar://7653468 about the fact that battery conditioning shouldn't force sysadmins to keep their machine running for the next 24 hours (since they might really need to shut it down, right now).

What's the difference in Apple RAID card battery error messages?

I have a Mac Pro with 2 quad core Intel Harpertown CPUs at 3.2GHz, and an Apple RAID card. RAID Utility shows that the battery failed but in my research, nobody explains the difference between "Battery failed (code 0x#0 = 17)" (which is what I have) and "Battery failed (code 0x#0 = 18)" or ""Battery failed (other than expired)" (the latter two are what everybody talks about) and what the code numbers mean. Speaking to a local AASP, they recommend that I just wait for a couple of days to see if it's doing the automatic 72-hour reconditioning operation since my Mac Pro is attached to a pretty hefty UPS (2200VA with nothing else attached) and power failures where I live are rare plus the write cache has been disabled so the RAID card is basically doing write-throughs at the moment. But curiosity about the various, different error codes and messages is getting the better of me. Thanks in advance.
Also, what's worrying me (since RAID Utility is so vague) is this entry I found under "Hardware RAID" in System Profiler:
Status:
Charging:          No
Conditioning:          No
Connected:          Yes
Discharging:          No
Sufficient Charge:          No

As an update to this, once I replaced the RAID card battery (which was an absolute nightmare--the writer of the instructions at Apple obviously had never done it for real nor seen it done since they omit a lot of important things), the problem went away. But I'm still intrigued about what the error codes mean.

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

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.

Hated RAID card removed, now what?

Finally, after three years of pain and suffering, the RAID card is de-installed.
It was easier than expected. Backed up my three old drives (that were converted into "enhanced JBOD" long ago), installed an extra drive (formatted with DU) and cloned the startup drive on it.
Pulled the card, generally reversing the procedure described in www.caldigit.com/Support/CalDigitRAIDCardGettingStarted(2.2.0).pdf. Messing with the lower of the two screws holding the fan module was a *****.
Surprisingly, the "enhanced JBOD" drives (that I thought would be unreadable without the card) are perfectly readable. I was expecting that I'd have to reformat them. But the system booted up right away from one of them, and everything seems to be working.
The question is: do I still need to reformat those drives? Should I expect any troubles from them - since they were formatted with RAID utility and through the card that is no longer there?

Thanks!
Then I believe I'm done.
(Had I known it's that easy I'd get rid of it two years ago. The notion of a RAID controller that fails more often than any of the disks it manages with is ridiculous. But someone somewhere wrote that the disks that this card had touched would not work without it, even if they were JBOD.)

Apple RAID Card - Battery failed (code 0x#0 = 18)

Hello,
Upon start up of the computer I get a message that says "The Apple RAID Card installed in your system requires your attention".
When I open up the RAID Utility I have messages like -
Battery failed (code 0x#0 = 18)
Write cache disabled due to insufficient Battery Charge
Can anyone explain what this means and what I should now do?
Do I need a new Battery and does this mean my RAID 5 isn't saving data correctly?
Thanks in advance for any assistance.
Kris

Hello
I have the same problem too:
Battery failed (code 0x#0 = 18)
or in my case, I am german: Die Batterie funktioniert nicht (Code 0x#0 = 18)
It happened the first time after one year and I replaced the battery. One year later it happened again and I replaced the battery. And one more year later again. This time I decided not to replace the battery.
I booted the system from the recovery media and started the the raid utility from there and it said: battery charging.
So I returned to my "normal" partition and it said: battery charging.
A few days later: Battery failed (code 0x#0 = 18)
I repeaded this several times, always with the same result.
I was quite sure that all the trouble resulted from a firmware bug.
So I did shut down my Mac, and removed my raid card. On the raid card I disconnected the battery and waited a few minutes and reconnected it. I reassembled all and started my Mac.
It is running now for more than a month without any further errors.

'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?

Work Around Help: Apple RAID Card & Boot Camp

-Hello and thanks for taking the time to read my post and possibly provide me with a solution.-
I have the newest Mac Pro (early 2009) and the apple RAID card.
I want to be able to run boot camp with winXP, but it appears from talking with tech support that the 3x SAS 15,000 rpm drives (RAID 5 config) with the RAID card does not support boot camping. I guess the RAID card is still unsupported through windows/boot camp?
I have a 1tb 7200 rpm drive spare.
Is there a work around to get boot camp to run natively (no virtual machines via Parelles or VMware Fusion please) on my computer? What options for running boot camp do I have?
Can anyone out their solve my issue?
Kind regards,
Will

Is there a work around to get boot camp to run natively?
Hi,
Unfortunately, Apple does NOT support Boot Camp when the Apple RAID card is installed.
What I would suggest is to remove the Apple RAID card and insert a SATA hard disk into the Mac Pro. At this point, you can install Mac OS on it (using the Apple DVD) and then Boot Camp.
I know this is not the solution you are looking for but its the best I have
This is why I did not purchase the Apple RAID card and I cannot recommend it to users that would like to install Boot Camp.
Have fun!

MAC PRO (Early 2008) RAID CARD ISSUE - SYSTEM FREEZEHello (hopefully someone can shed some light on my issue) I own as above a MAC PRO (Early 2008) this has a RAID card installed along with two 15k.7 cheetah hdd (320gb) and a spare drive, (which i m

Hello (hopefully someone can shed some light on my issue)
I own as above a MAC PRO (Early 2008) this has a RAID card installed along with two 15k.7 cheetah hdd (320gb) and a spare drive, (which i made a regular drive)
a while ago i had to replace the RAID card battery, so i did this, over a year later the same thing happened again, but as previous just left it and the system seemed fine for ages, until last night i was working in PHOTOSHOP and everything just froze and the screen kind of appeared GREEN, could not do a single thing. So restarted the mac, this time grey screen for ages and a message appeared, (macs version of blue screen) (see attached).
I restarted the machine and this time a flashing question mark folder!
could not do a thing.
so i found my copy of snow leopard and got the computer to run this and at least launch the DISK UTILITY and (Interestingly in the drop down menu RAID UTILITY was also in the menu) but it did not matter which utility i used the (RAID or DISK) neither could see any of drives, just the dvd drive.
so looked around on you tube and various forums and discovered if i take out the RAID CARD and re-plug the main lead from the RAID card back in to the LOGIC BOARD I would be reverting the MAC to a normal regular non-RAID computer.
After performing this HARDWARE task and inserting all three HDD, and running the DISK utility from the drop down menu via the SNOW LEOPARD disc.
(interestingly since the RAID card had been removed the RAID UTILITY from the drop down menu no longer appeared). running disk utility I can now only see the regular (spare) hdd and DVD Drive, but the two RAID HDD , again, still do not show up DISK UTILITY?
O.K. so i could chuck out the RAID card (AND RAID HDD) and just go with a regular set-up, and run a back restore from Time Machine on a NEW hdd purchased.
but what is wrong with the RAID, is the card at fault or are both HDD used for the RAID knackered? can i perform any tests, to see whats what?
thanks for your help in advanced.

hello people, the issue was in fact the GRAPHICS card nothing to do with the HDD or RAID system ( although this did cause issues with the RAID system it basically lost its way) below is my replay to another similar problem some one else had!
working in photoshop and then everything stopped working and the lot froze! only option was to force shutdown (via button).
and try to restart, hoping all was fine, this was not the case :-(
I had the added issue of the RAID card system, that i have, this was confused to say the lease and would not behave or work, causing the start up to hang.
so i thought the HDD must be bust and the root cause. ( but soon learnt it was not the cause )
...bought a new HDD removed the RAID card and replugged the cable from RAID card into LOGIC board, ( making the computer act like any normal non-RAID system). I managed to install the OSX, using the snow leopard disk way. once the mac was running, i started to notice the screen would flicker and started to see 'artefacts'. so i started to reveal my symptoms to the web and forums and soon discovered that my graphics card could be the issue all along?.
(nvidia geforce 8800gt 2x dvi).
I read up on that a fix, could be either A. reply the thermal paste, as the card could be over heating or B. stick the card in the oven trick.
Tried option A. first and nothing still issues, so last night took the plunge carried out option B. and ta da it worked! i even managed to run
from my new HDD my lasted install OS X, absolutely fine. I then thought, maybe i could repair my RAID so replugged all the HARDWARD back in and
carried out a disk repair and disk permissions on drives( took a small amount of time), via the SNOW LEOPARD disc - (Disk utilities) and this worked and now have my system working as it was just over 6 days ago.
what was the cost to get this? bought a new hdd so 40.00gbp and thermal paste and cleaner kit ( your still need to do this ) search video card trick on you tube.
and renew thermal paste, approx 15.00gbp, technically i don't need the new HDD, but it was all part of the trial and error way i went. ( i do have extra storage as a result!)"

TS140 and adding a RAID card

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