Xserve Raid Drive

Hello everyone, im going to need an answer pretty fast because im going to need to make a decision today. Can any PATA Drive (lets say a 320gb) work in the xraid? I know its stupid but im new to this

If the SMART will talk to the XRAID it will work. There are drives that "know to work" so people usually stick with those to save buying 16 drives that turn out not to work. Search the other threads for specific drive models but they are getting scarce to non-existent in certain sizes. There was a model 500GB drives that are still being produced that a couple of people reported to work recently.
=Tod

Similar Messages

  • Where to buy a xserve RAID drive module in the UK?

    Hi does anyone know anywhere that still sells xserve RAID drive modules for a 2005 RAID
    we have 400 GB drives but can use a 500 GB because we have the latest firmware.
    If modules are unavailable can I take the failed drive out of the module and replace with a new one.
    The current drive is a Hitachi Deskstar HDS724040KLAT80

    Just sold our complete xsan setup (42 400Gb modules included) for 2500 euro... (so 60 euro per drive) and that included 4 XServes as well

  • Finding replacement xServe RAID Drive Modules for sale

    I've just started a new IT job and inherited an xServe (snow leopard) and xServe RAID
    I'm not an expert on either. I've some experience with OS X Server, but I've never been a full on server admin.
    One drive is dead. I believe they're 500GB units in the first six bays.
    I also believe this is the most recent xServe RAID hardware. Purchased in 2008 or so.
    So, first, where on earth would I buy a replacement?
    And assuming that's possible, what are people's suggestions for buying drive modules for the other bays, and replacement parts for the xServe itself (power suppies, etc.).
    Thanks!

    first of all i don't have experience with proprietary Apple products, but typically i believe you can buy any hard drive so long as the interface is compatible (SATA or SAS for example) and the size is the same.  there should not be a need to buy 'special Apple xserve hard drives'.  if you buy a drive larger than 500 GB then the extra space beyond 500 GB will just be ignored depending on the type of RAID you have setup.  definitely do not buy a disk smaller than 500 GB.  pull out the disk that is bad and see what the make/model is.  my xserve uses Seagate drives so you could probably just search eBay or whatever for the model number of the drive and use that.  the hard drive should be able to be removed from the caddy so you don't really need a whole new "module".
    as for power supplies those are proprietary and will need to be purchased thru apple or somewhere else like eBay, just search for the part number...

  • Xserve Raid Not Showing all Drives Empty - No Green Lights on Xserve Raid Drives

    I have an Xserve Raid.  I recently set it up with my Xserve server with fiber cables and now when the Xserve Raid system boots and starts all the drives show as empty in the Raid monitor.  Not sure if I have something configured wrong and I think I shut it down incorrectly before I got it hooked up right.  When I first got it I was able to see the lights on all the drives but now it boots but no drives show up at all.  I have fiber cables to the host Xserve machine and the Xserve Raid plugged into the network with only 1x  ethernet cables (not 2 if that makes a difference).  When I try to manage the Xserve Raid all drives show as empty even though all the 500GB drives are plugged in.  Not seeing any green lights when the Xserve raid boots indicates something is up.  I reset the controller cards to stock with the paper clip to factory settings.  Does anyone have any ideas on what to try.  Anyone have this issue?  I haven't found any discussions except one that had a single side of drives go down because of a bad controller card.  My Xserve Raid shows no drives at all.  Any help is appreciated.

    Expansion is a 2 step process: First, you expand the array. Second, you merge the slices. The documentation is clear on step #2, but the GUI doesn't FORCE you to do it. However, it is necessary.
    If you did both steps, try rebooting your host and see if it picks up the changed size. It does work... the usual issue though is growing the file system to recognize the additional size. On Linux, I can't help you.

  • Good article from Tom Yager on Xserve RAID drives

    Since "Why is an Apple module more expensive than a drive I can buy at CompUSA?" is a very common question here, this is good background:
    http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterprisemac/archives/2007/02/applesxserver.html

    Also are there any issues with upgrading to 750GB drives?
    In addition to the drives, you'll also need to upgrade the firmware on the RAID. If you're running the same firmware as when you bought the unit then it'll only support drives up to the then-current maximum - in this case it sounds like 250GB.
    Installing the latest firmware will give you support for larger drives.

  • Want to make sure I replace RAID drive correctly.

    In my previous post, I mentioned I had a drive go out and now my system will crash whenever I start my G5 while the fibre channel cables are connected. I'm assuming this is because it automatically mounts the Xserve RAID drive. When I disconnect the fibre cables, it starts up fine and I can go into the RAID admin and see the system and administer it.
    Today I got my replacement drive. I've been reading a ton but some re-assurance that I'm doing it correctly would be great. If I've read everything correctly, I should be able to just install the new drive without risk but, if I read everything correctly, I will need to go into the RAID admin utilities and select "make drive available for use" and make the new one the backup?
    There is something about "unmounting" the RAID first but it's not mounted or connected by the fibre channel at this time. How/should I do something else to disconnect it? Will it continue to crash my machine at restart or how do I connect it and not have it mount?
    Help please
    Bart

    +I should be able to just install the new drive without risk but, if I read everything correctly, I will need to go into the RAID admin utilities and select "make drive available for use" and make the new one the backup?+
    Depending on how the RAID sees the disk it may or may not use it right away. Essentially if it suspects it might be part of another RAID it will not use it until you go into RAID Admin and mark it "available for use". Other than that step it should immediately use the new drive to rebuild the RAID.
    +There is something about "unmounting" the RAID first but it's not mounted or connected by the fibre channel at this time. How/should I do something else to disconnect it?+
    No, that's talking about unmounting it from the desktop - but with your fibre detached you don't have anything to worry about there.
    +Will it continue to crash my machine at restart or how do I connect it and not have it mount?+
    I would powerdown the Xserve, attach the cables and then reboot it to be safe. But I wouldn't go so far as to restart the XRAID (unless someone else here with more experience suggests that you do).
    Assuming the malformed disk was the source of the crashing hopefully everything will return to normal.
    Good luck, let us know how it goes!
    =Tod

  • Data Rate from XServe Raid

    Hello all,
    I have what I thought would be a simple question, but I've found nothing anywhere to answer it.
    We have a new G5 Quad and an XServe Raid connected via Fibre Channel with 4 500 GB drive modules. Our Video capture card is the Decklink Extreme SD, but my employer has found a firm that will transfer our Cinealta HDCam tapes at full HD onto hard drives for transfer into our system. He then wants to work in full 10 bit uncompressed 4:2:2 HD (1080i) for editing.
    I have tried several RAID configurations and used the Decklink Drive Speed Test Utility and found that the fastest data rate I am able to achieve is around 75 MB/sec (using RAID 0), which, according to the utility is only good for about 15 fps at 10 bit 4:2:2 1080.
    So my question is this: How many Xserve Raid drive modules striped as RAID 0 would we need to achieve the 182.3 MB/sec data rate (according to the FCP manual) required to edit in full 10 bit 4:2:2 at 1080i at 24-30 fps? Is it simply a matter of doubling the 4 we now have? or is there some other calculation that would be required?
    Thanks for the help

    14
    Figure conservatively that each fully loaded controller (7 drives) in an Xserve RAID will give you 80 to 100 MB/sec. 160 to 200 MB/sec for both controllers fully loaded.
    With an Xserve RAID, RAID 5 will give you almost the same bandwidth as RAID 0, so there's insufficient reason to forego the file protection of RAID 5.
    Then, when you stripe the two sides together in Disk Utility, you should be getting more than 200 MB/sec, enough for a single stream of uncompressed 1080i, but probably not enough for two streams. It depends.

  • Xserve RAID and windows

    How do I configure a Windows PC to access Xserve RAID drives?

    Kind of a vague question...
    Are you trying to attach the Windows PC directly to the XServe RAID?
    Or is the XServe RAID attached to a Mac and you're trying to access the data over a network?
    In the first case you should just need a fiber channel card in the Windows PC and run a fiber channel cable from the PC to the RAID - depending on how the RAID is configured, it should just appear.
    In the second case you need to share the XServe RAID volumes via SMB. The specifics of how to do this vary based on which version of Mac OS X Server you're running.

  • Mac Pro + XServer RAID + FCP2 + Configuration

    Hello all. This is my first post here.
    I will soon buy a MacPro por video editing on Final Cut Pro 2 and I was wondering if you could help sort out if the configuration I've chosen is the best.
    I'll show you the configurations I thought first:
    *Mac Pro*
    - Two 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
    - 4GB (4 x 1GB)
    - Mac Pro RAID Card
    - 2 x 500gb HDD
    - ATI Radeon X1900 XT
    - 20" Apple Cinema Display + 23" Apple Cinema HD Display
    - Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCIe
    *XServer RAID*
    - 2000GB ADM (4x500GB Ultra ATA)
    - Cache Battery Back-up Modules
    - Dual-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCIe
    My idea:
    A) The MAC Pro I'll be used for 3D rendering and video editing. I'll configure the 2x500GB with RAID1 (mirroring) for a fail safe env, leaving my with 500GB of available space
    B) XServer RAID will be connected directly to the Mac Pro (for now) via the fiber optic cards and we'll provided additional storage.
    C) For projects stored on the XServer RAID (videos for example) I must be able to access and edit directly with FCP2 without having to pass it to the Mac Pro
    D) I was thinking of using RAID5 for XServer RAID configuration leaving me with 2.64 x 500GB (as described on support faqs) = 1.3 TB of disk space with a reasonable fail safe environment (RAID5 with 3 drives allows one drive to fail and offers a good recovery rate).
    OK. My questions:
    1) Is my MacPro config enough for FCP2 + 3D Rendering ?
    2) Can I use the XServer RAID directly with Mac Pro or do I need aditional software / hardware?
    3) Can I connect the fiber optic from one board to the other without using the router? (on google the answers I found were very vague...)
    4) Is the RAID5 the best choice (in terms of performance vs data recovery) for video editing. The RAID5 specs states that random writes to disk are slower that other RAID configs. Is RAID 50 (5+0) a better choice?
    5) I opted for the 4 HDD config on XServer but I could change to a 7 HDD config for a similar total space.
    I'm sorry for the long post, but I can't find anywhere suitable information about this questions.
    Hope to hear from you.
    Thanks in advance!

    We have a ton of Xserve's and Xserve RAID's at my work. As of right now they're all directly connected to our servers with Fibre Channel cables (NOT fiber optic, totally different animal.) We finally just bought our first Fibre Channel switch to hookup five 10.5TB RAIDS and a huge tape loader for backups. The RAID's work perfectly when directly connected and are very fast. The only reason that you would need a Fibre Channel switch is if you want multiple machines to be able to access the array without using network shares.
    I really don't think that just four drives will give you the performance that you're looking for. In order to get good performance out of a RAID5 you NEED as many spindles as you can get. If you're stuck to a budget if would probably go to smaller drives but get more of them. I think you've already discovered this but if you want to do a RAID5+0, you'll need to populate drives on both sides of the RAID as they are physically seperated.
    As far as I know, you can only get Xserve RAID Drive Modules from Apple as they do some pretty intensive testing on every drive before they ship. You can't even buy empty modules, you can buy blanks but they don't include the required electronics.

  • Which 750GB drives used in an XServe RAID?

    Could somebody with an XServe RAID with 750GB drives please tell me, which drives are used in this configuration? You can look it up in the XServe RAID admin utility, under Arrays and Drives when selecting a drive in "drive" mode.
    Thanks a lot,
    Floh

    ST3750640 NA P
    Revision 3.BTF
    it is a seagate

  • Dropped frames on Xserve RAID upgraded w/750GB drives.

    I'm capturing in 10-bit uncompressed standard definition 720x480. I just upgraded one side of my Apple XRAID, (connected directly via fibre channel) with seven, 750GB hard drives from Apple, drives designed for the XRAID, (came with there own sleds.)
    Current Xserve RAID firmware version is at version 1.5.1/1.51c
    Before the upgraded drives, no issues with dropped frames, (drives 1-7) the other side of the same RAID has no problems, (currently running 250GB drives, drives 8-14.) All sleds are populated with drives of the same capacity, (respective to each side.)
    The drives were formated using the Xserve RAID Admin software and mounted using Apples Disk Utilities, Journaling turned off. The final formated capacity of the RAID on drives 1-7 is 4.1TB.
    When I capture to the drives on the upgrade side, I get dropped frames. When capturing to the other side, no issues, works great. I checked the settings for performance and they are the same for both sides, as follows:
    Use Controller Write Cashe - ON
    Allow Host Cashe Flushing - OFF
    Use Drive Write Cashe - ON
    Use Steady Streaming Mode - OFF
    Read Prefetch: 128 stripes (8 MB/disk)
    My capture box is an AJA I/o and has never given me dropped frames till now, but only on the side of the RAID that has the new 750GB drives. I also have another RAID that uses 500GB drives on both sides and it work just fine as well, (no dropped frames) using the same performance settings in XRAID utilities.
    Any suggestion on why these new Apple drives modules are dropping frame would be very much appreciate. Again 7 new 750GB drives from Apple w/sleds having dropped frame issues.

    I'm capturing in 10-bit to avoid loss of quality from analog sources like BetaCam SP as well as line 21 must be part of the captured file, because it contains line 21 for captioning. Eight bit has a banding issue that I can't have in the final product and 10-bit doesn't have this issue.
    Source quality is maintained completely when working in 10-bit uncompressed, as well as the captioning data that I need, which is stripped out of the captured video latter. Captioning software can read line 21 of the raster area, of the captured file.
    Source video is from BetaCam SP, DVC Pro and DVCam.
    The RAID is an Apple Xserve RAID, connected via Fibre channel directly, (no xsan.)
    I also create high quality QuickTime Streaming files from these source files, the higher the quality of the source video the the better the streaming files look when created.
    I have never had any problem capturing till I installed these new drives from Apple.
    The RAID is as stated above, is an Apple Xserve RAID, connect via a fibre channel card in a Mac Pro 3.0GHz tower, (no xsan is used, due to connecting directly to the XRAID.)

  • Drives just stop with new Xserve raid

    I have just set up a new Xserve on 10.4.5 with 2 x 400 gig drives.The raid has been set up by the book twice and the drives were formated aswell, the problem is that after the raid is set up i then test it by copying lots of data to it from various machine across the network and after about 10 gigs of copying the drives just stop, on their own(not in a raid) the drives work fine.
    Any suggestions ?
    Thanks
    Matt

    Hello, Diego Arana and welcome to the AppleBoards,
    +I don´t know what OS the Xserve RAID has, I just know that it is the first one.+
    The Xserve RAID has no operating system on it. It is essentially a very fancy external hard drive that attaches over fibre channel. It does a firmware version that can be updated but that is the closest thing to an OS that it has. (Unless you're adding drives you can probably leave that alone.) The XRAID is controlled over either of the ethernet ports using the RAID Admin program - if you don't have a copy download it from Apple's support site.
    +Is it possible to connect a New MacPro (Early 2009) to a Xserve RAID (RAID 720G/4DRIVE/2X2GB FC) via fiber channel?+
    Yes, I have done this and it is straightforward. The fibre will negotiate down to 2GB, of course, but it does just work. If you're talking about the Apple shipped fibre card it is (at least in the states) shipped with SFP connectors that match the SFP connectors that are on the Xserve RAID and you just use the copper cabling (not the optical fibre) to connect them unless you are going a very long distance. If you order the card (again in the states) with Xserve the copper cables are included when they ship it.
    If you do have optical connections you can buy optical to copper/SFP converters. I have several of these on my fibre switch and they are not more complicated than adding the adaptor and plugging them in - at least on the fibre switch. I have never actually hooked up an XRAID to optical fibre but this is pretty common in XSAN environments with longer "cable" runs.
    HTH,
    =Tod

  • XServe Raid won't mount after drive replacement

    We had a drive go bad on an XServe Raid.  We replaced the drive.  It went through the rebuilding process. Now we can't mount the raid.  The verify in the disk utility is successful but it still won't mount.  What are we missing?

    I have managed to fix the problem (at least it's still going at the moment...). We were just about to return the Fiber Card to Apple, but just before I removed the card from the G5 I had one last look at the settings on the RAID. Previously I had noticed that LUN Masking was on. I didn't take much notice of this before, as I read in an Apple manual somewhere that LUN Masking is always on while the Xserve is initializing the disks. As a last resort I thought to try and force LUN Masking to be disabled. I changed the array to JBOD, so the disks wouldn't be initialized, and entered the advanced settings. I then went to the LUN Masking section and turned off masking for both controllers. I then shut down the Xserve and unplugged it for 10 minutes.
    I then turned on the Xserve and the G5 and to my utter delight, the G5 said "Unrecognized disk inserted"! The G5 was finally seeing the RAID.
    I then formatted the RAID and everything has been fine since (4-5 hours).
    I have no idea how LUN Masking turned on, the masking list had no devices in it, so the RAID was basically disallowing anyone access through fiber. Upon turning masking off, the RAID reappeared on the G5. Apple support said nothing about LUN Masking when I on the phone to them. I guess they though resetting the RAID controllers would reset the LUN Masking, but it doesn't seem to. I repeat: Resetting the RAID controllers does not reset LUN Masking.
    All along this was the problem, but no-one at Apple or the reseller we purchased the Xserve RAID from thought of it!
    I hope this helps someone out there.
    Elijah
    PowerMac G5, PowerBook G4   Mac OS X (10.4.6)   G5: 1.8Ghz 1Gb RAM Geforce 6800. PowerBook: 100Gb HD, 1.25Gb RAM

  • Cannot map or even see drives on xserve RAID hanging off a xserve

    Sorry if I sound like a complete idiot, but when it comes to Macs I am one. We have a OS X Server 10.5.8 and a xserve RAID. The RAID looks ok and under the server I can see both of the RAID drives that have been created and access them. When we try to map to it on one of our house Macs, its errors out with "There was a problem connecting to the server." When we try to map to just the root of the server, we can see its hard drive, but not the RAID drives. Any help would be most appreciated!

    By default, Mac OS X Server only shares the root drive.
    In order to share external volumes (such as the XServe RAID volumes) you need to use Server Admin to mark the volumes as shared (as well as which protocols to use).

  • XServe RAID - Possible Dead Drive

    I'm running a G5 XServe with RAID 5 - I have 3 80 GB drives, and it has slowed significantly recently - when loading some software today, I see that one of the drive lights (power light is on) was not blinking showing activity... I think the drive may be dead. Any software utility that I can use to check on the health of the drives?

    Hi randolph,
    This forum is about the xserve RAID, aphyiscal box that can contain 14 disks and connects through fibre channel.
    I suggest you ask your question in a more apropriate forum, there will be more knowkedge about your question there.
    (To get you started: I would check the disk first with disk utility)
    Regards
    Donald

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