What is a RAID card?

I was looking around and saw a MacPro RAID card on the apple store page it says what it does and stuff, but what is it for? Does it improve your computer ?
thanks,
(http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB845Z/A/mac-pro-raid-card?fnode=58)

RAID allows you to set up a team of Disk Drives to act as one. There are configurations that provide additional capacity, additional speed, and additional redundancy, as well as combinations. Many common configurations do not requires any special Hardware.
RAID optimized for speed gets additional speed by overlapping the read of the next block with the data transfer from the previous block. This only provides an improvement in speed when the larger operation is not interrupted by ANY stray reads or writes at other areas of the Disk. Setting up a single RAID for reading and writing data at the same time does NOT provide a measurable speedup.
Some versions of RAID (e.g., RAID 5) calculate and store check blocks that can provide some redundancy across three or more drives. If one drive fails, the remaining data and the check blocks can be combined to recreate the missing data. This requires that check blocks be calculated and checked as data go by, which requires additional Hardware assistance to be adequately speedy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
The Apple RAID card is showing signs of advanced age, and has not been updated in quite a while. Many here consider it a poor investment at this time. It limits you to 2.2TB per drive. Its battery has been a source of major problems.
You can use Disk Utility to create Mirrored RAID, Striped RAID, and JBOD RAID without a need for any card.

Similar Messages

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.

How do I determine what needs attention on my Apple RAID card?

Every time I turn on the computer, I get a message that says," The Apple RAID Card installed in your system requires your attention."
This is what I have: RAID 065-7214 Mac Pro RAID Card
Why do I keep getting this message? I am not sure what needs to be done to rectify any error. If there is no error and the warning is just due to battery charging, then I would like the warning to stop appearing--or do I just have to continuously click "Ignore"? Any insight into this?
When I open RAID Utility it says: RAID set R0-1 has been mounted with indeterminate data loss. ( Is this just due to improper shutdown?)
Also: Controller reports RAID system 72-hour battery reserve unavailable-System is configured to run without battery.
Message was edited by: Darlyne

I have had the exact same error message. When you open Raid Utility (that is where you can read what "attention" is needed you will see under the "Status" section what happened, and under the "Tasks" you will see the raid card "initializing" your RAID set. The first time I saw this I freaked, thinking that my drives were being reformatted, and my data would be lost. This is not the case. If you look down on the left side, you will (hopefully) see green lights next to your drives. The initialization seems to be a verification of the raid structure -- basically checking to make sure everything is redundant.
So, back to the original question: it seems from my poking around that you SHOULD NEVER TURN OFF your Mac Pro with an Apple Raid Card installed. The firmware is not able to spin down the drives correctly, so when you turn your machine back on, you get the error message we have been discussing.
I would recommend you get a good battery backup (UPS, like an APC) and just power off your monitor when not using your machine. I did not see this in the documentation, I am not 100% sure, but this is what I will be doing. In my case it takes many hours for the Raid Util to initialize my Raid again.
Hope this helps.
Theo

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.

What happens if the Raid card battery goes dead?

I just got my MacPro, Raid card, and 3 SAS drive. I set it up as Raid 0. The battery in the Raid card is good for 72 hrs. And that is to save the raid cache. So what happens if I leave the MacPro unplugged for longer then 3 days and the battery goes dead? Do I loose all my data?
Thanks-Ray

With an orderly shutdown prior to disconnecting the power, no problems should arise.

Raid card problem, migration from Caldigit to.... What else?

Hey,
So long story short apple has decided to crew my 2008 mac pro for a new 2009! Which is pretty awesome, except for one small (big) problem. I have a 4 drive raid 5 array off of the Caldigit raid card... however the new system does not have an ipass cable, correct? Meaning I can't connect my raid card..
So here's my problem, I already dropped a bunch of money on this raid card, but I really need a raid 5 array for what I do, any suggestions?

So here's my problem, I already dropped a bunch of money on this raid card, but I really need a raid 5 array for what I do, any suggestions?
Hi,
I would recommend the HighPoint RocketRAID 4322, SeriTek/2eEN4 4-bay, hot swap enclosures and mini-SAS to eSATA cables. You can read more about this configuration here:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/intel/macpro-2009/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/4322/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/2eEN4/
http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata2een4.html
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000JQ51CM/arizomacinusergr
This external SATA solution supports RAID 5/6 and provides easy access to the hard disks. I like the external option best as it leaves the internal bays for boot camp, boot drives and backing up or importing data.
If you require an internal solution, and do not mind the limitations that come with it you may want to explore the new MaxUpgrades "SAS/SATA Backplane Attachment."
http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_i d=189
http://www.barefeats.com/hard120.html
Happy hunting!

What is the best e-Sata PCI RAID card for Mavericks.

What is the best e-Sata PCI RAID card for Mavericks. Bought a new MAC PRO with Mavericks and the older PCI 1095,3124 that I used on older MAC Pro does not work. The MAC sees it, but the drivers never show up as being installed. If I could find drivers that work or a recommended PCI card it would be appreciated.
Thanks

PM made sense - 6 yrs ago when disk drives were much slower. Today it is a bottleneck.
SAS makes more sense. Outside of SSD, no disk drive maxes out by itself one PM interface (an SSD will) but it also means just two drives are enough to do so. So check out why to avoid PM:
www.macperformanceguide.com

What is RAID card or RAID utility?

Hi all,
I'm new on mac and I've been exploring my new macbook pro to learn more about it . I noticed that in the utility folder an application called RAID card. I'm just wondering what its is any ideas
Thanks

It's for specially formatting an external hard disk which has two more more linked disks which can be configured to appear as one disk in different set-ups: please see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

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.)

Sleep or Shut Down with Mac Pro RAID Card?

I'll be gone for a four-day weekend trip, which is longer than the 72 hours claimed for the Mac Pro RAID Card battery. If I shut down and come back four days later, the battery will presumably be discharged. What will happen when I restart?
Asked another way ... is 72 hours the maximum amount of time that the computer should be shut down or do I simply restart and wait for the battery to recharge and the write caches to be re-enabled?
The FAQ for the Mac Pro RAID Card http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1346 talks around this issue, but doesn't say whether it is a good or bad idea to allow the battery to discharge for "... any length of time." Please review the appended excerpt from the FAQ and advise on whether I should sleep or shut down.
Regards,
iPhoton
Question: Why does RAID Utility show a yellow light and report the status "Write cache disabled"?
Answer: The write cache is disabled automatically so data cannot be written to RAID volumes when the battery charge is not sufficient to back up cached data for 72 hours. This message is normally encountered when a RAID Card is used for the first time, when the battery enters a conditioning cycle once every three months, or when a computer with a RAID Card installed is shut down for any length of time.
If your RAID card's firmware is M-2.0.3.3 or later, or E-1.2.2.4 or later, you can use RAID Utility to force-enable the write cache while the battery conditions itself. Warning: If you enable the write caches before the battery is fully charged, you might lose some data if the power to your computer is interrupted.

Thanks to everyone who replied to my message. I did a proper backup and normal shut down on Wednesday night and restarted on Monday morning. That was over 100 hours later and certainly more than the battery is specified (72 hours).
When I restarted on Monday morning I noticed ... no change! The battery was fully charged according to the RAID Utility, I received no warning messages, there were no new events in the RAID Utility log ... it's as if the extended shutdown never occurred.
So, an extended shutdown appears not to be a problem and I won't worry about it again, not even on my next extended shutdown for three weeks at the end of the year.
Regards,
iPhoton

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!)"

Using a Mac Pro w / Apple Internal Hardware RAID Card?

Anyone using a Mac Pro with a Apple Hardware RAID Card 2010?
( I have a 12 Core )
Is it worth the $600-700 ?
How much faster than the software RAID 0?
I see Hamm's RAID tips chart .. but it doesn't include such options .. plus it is based on a PC system.
Any tips would be great ..
I find many areas where the application is slow / unresponsive .. and I'm not sure where the bottleneck is ... Maybe the hardware RAID will solve it?
I'm really am impressed with CS5 .. it would be even better with some adjustments .. but I am absolutely disappointed with sluggish performance on my top-of-the-line Mac Pro 12 Core.
This is not what I expected for a $8,000 machine.
Some users says that the port of CS5 for the Mac has taken a back seat to the Windows version at Adobe.
I can't imagine that Adobe would not put 100% effort into Mac products.
Go Team!!!

I have a 2009 Mac Pro 3.33GHz Quad core w/ Apple RAID card, 16GB RAM from OWC, and Apple's Radeon HD 5870 GPU.
I have RAID 0 set across 3x1TB drives internally, and the standard 640GB drive for OSX and all program files. I set all video assets, renders, previews and such on the 3TB RAID.
This seems to work wonderfully. I built this system specifically to edit a feature film shot on P2 DVCProHD, and I've been impressed with how it handles it. This was all built prior to CS5, which took me by surprise. Had I known nVidia would become such a problem for Apple, I would have built a PC, but that's another story.
I just started a new project in CS5 on the same system, this time using H.264 video from my Nikon D7000, and so far, it seems to play just as nicely, despite not having hardware acceleration via CUDA technology. Yellow bars on top, even. I haven't had any problems with clips taking a long time to populate on the timeline or any of that, so perhaps the RAID card helps there.
All this aside, I've already decided to upgrade my RAID for another reason. Right now, my backup is performed via an eSATA-connected external drive through a PCI eSATA card. After every edit session, I dump everything on the RAID onto the external drive, and it goes much faster than the old FW800 transfer used to. I'm about to replace my Apple RAID card with an Areca card and set up a 4-bay RAID 3 via an SAS connection. This will allow for excellent data throughput while offering more security than my current RAID 0 / manual backup system, and free up the internal drives for backups, exports and render files.
I believe in hardware RAID, but I'm not as knowledgeable as Harm and others are about it. I had my Mac built to order with the Apple RAID card, so I have no experience using Premiere with a software RAID. Due to my smooth experience using it, I think it was worth it, but plenty of people say the Apple RAID card is rubbish, and to go with Areca or Atto cards. I didn't know about them until after I built my system, and even though it will cost a couple thousand to upgrade my RAID from this point, I expect to have an even better system than I already have.
I hope this helps, and feel free to ask any questions I didn't address.

Mac Pro (2009) RAID Card - Can't create RAID Set

Hi Everyone,
I have a Mac Pro 4,1 (Model 2009) running Mavericks 10.9.2. with the Apple RAID Card installed. I got 4 new SAS Drives (Dell Toshiba MK2001TRKB) which I'm trying to configure into a single RAID5 set.
OS X detects the individual drives and with Disk Utility I can partition and/or format the individual drives. However when I try to create a RAID5 set using RAID Utility, the card won't create the RAID set. Ik keeps on showing the white-blue stripped progress bar. Tried creating a RAID0 or RAID1 with just 2 drives, but the card just doesn't create a RAID set.
Anyone got a clue why this isn't working?
Thanks,
Sander

Manualy erased all 4 the drives and it worked instantly. System is now initializing the volume :-)
Still a bit strange. All 4 the drivers where brand new. I did some further testing and if I select the partion tab and just create a new partition on each drive, it still doesn't work. I have to select the erase option in Disk Utility and just do a simple erase on each drive in order to be able to create the RAIDset.
Anyway, Thanks for the advise; performance even during initializing is pretty fast. I'm curious to see what kind of performance I get aftet the initialization is completed.

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.

Raid Card Constantly Degrades Volumes - Mac Pro

I just got a new Mac Pro with Raid card. I of course purchased hard drives separately, rather than apples inflated rate. I picked up four 750 GB Samsung F1 Raid (F1R) edition drives from OWC thinking it would work well with my system.
No matter what raid level I choose, within a day or two it says one of drives were removed and then it says replaced within 15 seconds, causing the entire raid set to be degraded. I believe it might just be these drives go into a lower power standby mode and aren't as responsive as the raid card wants them to be....hence it declares them "removed." This means no matter what I have tried I am constantly changing raid levels hoping one will fair better than another and wasting 10+ hours initializing and reinstalling.
Any hints, can I make the raid card less sensitive through firmware update or something? I'm kind of bummed I have these four nice drives and the best option seems to be use them as individual JBOD drives.
Please help.

I had gone through this same process numerous times (though I was hoping for RAID 5). Apple officially says that they don't "support non-apple drives," though you would hope many work anyways. I believe my problem at least is probably due to the firmware on my hard drives not responding in the time frame the apple RAID card expects. So, I doubt your RAID card is faulty (though I greatly wish someone would post a solution to our problems).
After you give up trying to use RAID completely, you can erase all your RAID sets....select only one of the disks to create a set with, select the JBOD (Just a Bundle of Disks) mode. Repeat for all of your hard drives, create an individual volume on each, and install OS X. You will now be set up in a standard 4 separate hard disk mode with no RAID protection. However, you still utilize your RAID card so you get the added benefits of a large disk i/o cache (256 MB I believe) and a battery backup for your write operations. Not what I paid for but at least something that works. Be sure to set at least one of the disks for time machine to use as a backup (so you get something for data protection). Hope this helps, it took me awhile to decide to ditch RAID and think logically to get it working at least.
Please can anyone help solve our problems? Please!

What is a RAID card?

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