XServe with hardware RAID card and headless install

Today, while trying to remotely install Mac OS X Server 10.4 ("Tiger") on an Apple XServe G5 with hardware RAID card, I discovered that it did not report the IP address of the server (booted from CD) with the sa_srchr command as it did with Mac OS X Server 10.3. With Mac OS X Server 10.3, I could boot the server from the CD, use the sa_srchr command from a remote machine to find the IP address, ssh into the server and user megaraid to create or recreate the RAID volumes using the internal drives in the server.
When I boot the XServe from the Mac OS Server 10.4 CD and run the sa_srchr command from a remote computer, I get "No Longer Used" in the place where the IP address should be (as it was in 10.3 Server and as it is described in the current, 10.4 Server, "Command Line Administration" manual).
Example: localhost#2xCPUFormat#No Longer Used #xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx#Mac OS X Server 10.4#RDY4PkgInstall#3.0#512
Just as an experiment, I threw the Mac OS X Server 10.4 DVD into an iMac G5 and booted it. Using the sa_srchr command, I get the same "No Longer Used" where the IP address should be.
Does anyone know:
Is this a problem with the original "Mac OS X Server 10.4.0" installation CDs? Do I need 10.4.1, 10.4.2 or 10.4.3 CD/DVD media?
Has this functionality been removed from Tiger install discs? Is there another way to create the RAID volumes?
I know that I can use the Mac OS X 10.3 Server disks to work around this, but it doesn't seem like I should have to...
Justin Sako
Leander ISD

Are you sure you have the 10.4 Admin Tools installed on the 'client' machine? I've seen this happen when trying to set up a 10.4 server from a machine with 10.3 Admin Tools installed. Try deleting the Admin Tools from your client machine, and re-install from a 10.4 DVD.
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Similar Messages

Intel xserve with hardware raid. Volume not mounting but drives show good

So this morning we came in and found that our intel xserve with the hardware raid is not booting.
Booted from OS X Install DVD and Raid Utility shows the Raidset good and all drives good.
Open disk utility and no volume form the raid will show up.
ANY IDEAS!??!

New information.
So out of the blue the Volume decided it needed to run an initializing run.
Apple care says I have to just wait until its done and see if the volume mounts.
Very strange since everything was green (good) until just then.
UPDATE:
Next day, the initializing has finished and now the Volume says (good) but the Raid Set is now "in transition". Applecare says I have to just wait till its done and see if the volume mounts.

Workaround for Hardware Raid-Card and Bootcamp

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

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

OS drive + RAID 1 with Apple RAID card

I have a G5 Xserve with the RAID card and three ADM drives. How do I set up Megaraid to have a single non-raid drive and a RAID 1 mirror? I installed the OS onto one of the drives after a "destroyconfig". When I create the RAID with drives 1 and 2, the drive 0 is lost. THe only way I found to make it work was with a soft RAID 1 in disk utility.

How do I set up Megaraid to have a single non-raid drive and a RAID 1 mirror?
I'd go with not connecting one of the drives to the RAID card.
When you installed the card you replaced three short SATA cables with three long ones - one per drive.
Just replace one of the long ones with one of the original short ones. This will reconnect one of the drives back to the motherboard, leaving two drives connected to the RAID card.
Kind of a hack, for sure, but in lieu of having a JBOD mode in megaraid it seems like the simplest solution.

Wanted: Apple Hardware RAID Card for Xserve G5

I have some questions regarding the original internal Apple Hardware RAID Card for an Xserve G5.
1) Does it support native hardware RAID level 5?
2) Does anyone know where I can find one of these cards? I can't even find them on eBay.
3) I heard this card is based on an LSI board. Which model? Has anyone had success using the non-Apple version of the same model board in an Xserve G5 with internal Apple Drive Modules?
4) How do you hook up this card? Do I put it in the PCI slot and move the SATA cables to it or does the presence of the card just automagically take over the drives?
Thanks for all your help!

I heard this card is based on an LSI board. Which model?
Camelot is correct that this card is based on (is) the LSI Logic MegaRAID SATA 150-4 card:
http://www.lsi.com/storagehome/products_home/internal_raid/megaraid_sata/megaraid_sata1504/index.html
However, it has custom Apple Firmware to support booting by a PPC Xserve G5 rather than a PC. Apple also provides a ported version of the LSI Logic "megaraid" program to manage the card.
There is a bug (well, at least one) in the Apple Firmware version that was fixed by LSI Logic in its PC version subsequent to Apple's branch off of the LSI Logic code tree for the firmware. Specifically, the card sometimes doesn't fully flush its write caches before it disconnects from the drive buses on graceful power down (doesn't happen on restart). Only known workaround is to turn off the write caches for all LUNs. I turned in a RADAR report (RADAR ID 4350243) under our support agreement back in November 2005, but no action since. I follow up every so often, but clearly this EOL product is not a priority.
Has anyone had success using the non-Apple version of the same model board in an Xserve G5 with internal Apple Drive Modules?
Won't work without the Apple firmware. Apple doesn't distribute the firmware. Been there, done that. Our Apple Hardware RAID card failed in an odd way shortly after installation - it still functioned as a RAID controller once booted from another drive, but you couldn't boot from it. believe that the firmware became corrupted, and that it could have been fixed by flashing the firmware using the "megaraid" program, but Apple Support didn't have a file to flash it with, so it was handled by an RMA exchange.
RAID 5 performance is degraded with the write caches off, but our load is not heavy. I guess you could script the turning off and flushing of the write caches prior to shutdown, and turn them back on again during the boot sequence, but you'd really have to be careful to handle things like restart to CD boot, etc. We value our data more than speed.
This was a very difficult bug to troubleshoot, because the RAID 5 made the mystery garbage blocks from space very hard to find repeatably. Finally came up with a repeatable test case. Fortunately, discovered while testing the Xserve prior to deployment, so no valuable data was lost.
Russ

Hardware raid card in a G5 tower

Does anyone know if there are any problems using the Hardware RAID card, 661-3174 : M9699G/A, in a regular G5 tower instead of a xserve?
Thanks,
Scott

The G5 tower has two designated 3.5 inch drive bays although you may be able to stuff a couple of more drives in out of the way places.
You will need to run cables from wherever the drives are installed to the connectors on the RAID card. Keeping them out of the way may be a challenge.
The Apple card requires Mac OS X server 10.3.4 or higher. No mention was made if there were any problems with Tiger (10.4) or Leopard (10.5) server.
You will need to backup or image the existing drives prior to creating the RAID.
You may want to take a look at the LSI MegRAID controllers. Word on the street is that the Apple Xserve G5 RAID card was just a rebranded LSI with Apple firmware and drivers. But the product documentation may give you some ideas on the path ahead.
Good Luck

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

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.

Problem with discrete graphic card and DirectX 11

If I try any application to launch with discrete graphic card (nvidia geforce 740m) that using directx 11 it always crashes.
There no problems with directx 9 on on this graphic card.
There are no problems with integrated graphic card whether application using directx 9 or 11. Problem occurs only with discrete graphic card and directx 11.
The things that i did:
- Reinstall Windows
- Install latest driver updates (I also tried to uninstall latest and install recomended driver downloaded from the oficial HP support 'driver download' web page)
- different options on nvidia control panel 3d settings page
I also tried microsoft 'Direct3D Tutorial Win32 Sample' source code to build and debug. It is failed in function IDXGISwapChain:resent with code DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED and ID3D10Device::GetDeviceRemovedReason returns DXGI_ERROR_DRIVER INTERNAL_ERROR.
Is there any chance that is not hardware malfunction?
Model Envy 15-j175er
OS Windows 8.1 64

@Enegue ,
Hello and thank you for posting on the HP support forum. In your situation I would consider keeping with Directx 9. The reason I say this is your notebook is not a performance gaming machine. It is designed to be fore general use.
Some cards will notice issues when upgrading to direct 11 from a lower level.
Not to mention with your notebook you will want to stick with the drivers only provided from the HP support site. They are proprietary for the notebook and could be the reason why the directx 11 is not working.
Here is the link to your systems supported drivers.
HP ENVY 15-j175er Notebook PC (ENERGY STAR)
Thank you again for posting and have a great day.
Please click the "Thumbs Up" on the bottom right of this post to say thank you if you appreciate the support I provide!
Also be sure to mark my post as “Accept as Solution" if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others who face the same challenge find the same solution.
D5GR
I work on behalf of HP

Premiere Pro CS4 Unusable With Hardware RAID 0

Greetings, This is a mysterious problem I seem to be having, let me tell my tale...
I was using a software RAID0 while editing with Premiere. Even using HD clips, it was very fast! The RAID was only to serve up the footage. Scratch disk and OS disks are on separate drives.
We then upgraded to a Hardware RAID card (3ware) and migrated the data from the old to new drives, everything going fine. Finally get around to opening permiere and the project used to take 2 minutes or so to open, now takes an excruiciating 10-15 minutes! Plus the timeline that I was able to scrub through at a decent speed is basically unusable. I cannot play clips in the timeline either unless I render the preview, where on the software RAID I could play unrendered timelines with no stutters.
Went back to the software raid just to check, and it performed just as fast as before.
Of course I assumed it was a hardware issue. So I contacted 3Ware support and basically they were stumped. Then I moved onto running a whole slew of tests from HDtune on the RAID array. I was getting around 290MBps and very nice random I/O speeds, write speeds were great too. Weird. I could also open up any of my source clips in Quicktime and they would play perfect, and i could seek anywhere in the clip with no hesitation.
Still not satisified, I opened up about 250 clips in Avid MC5, (using AMA linking to make sure it's not some kind of codec thing) and made a lot of short cuts in the timeline. And lo and behold, it is playing like it is a rendered clip, and I can scrub through the timeline perfectly.
This weird HDD activity was then confirmed using a disk monitor. Take a look at the graph: http://www.bubble-engine.com/HDtune.jpg
The low evenly space out bars are activity from using Premiere Pro, when the timeline is unusable. The big solid areas are me using Avid. You can see for some mysterious reason that Premiere isn't accessing the drive properly. But again, on the software RAID Premiere behaves properly.....
Any Ideas?? This is one of the weirdest tech support things I've ever encountered...

when I click the record button, the screen goes to a blue screen with Playing on video hardware
This is normal for HDV.
How do I also get the Scene Detect to work?
With HDV?
Upgrade to CS5.

Raid card and scratch disk setup for FCP

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

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

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

Raid Card and Multiple Hardrives.

does anyone have any idea if I can use the raid card to use a seperate hard drive to run windows and then use another drive for mac OSX? That way I don't have to worry about partitioning my hardrive. If there is any way to do so I would really like to know. Also any cheaper suggestions for a raid card?

Fact is you cannot use the APPLE RAID CARD and also run Windows on any of the internal SATA ports. Unless you want to play around with iPass or reroute the cables.
http://www.apple.com/support/macpro/
I consider the RAID card more hinderance, and not just in terms of Boot Camp.
http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/
Windows 7 is fine, more users probably than use Leopard, and runs well, no issues, and better than Vista even with SP2.

Is it possible to get a T61 with discrete Graphic card and NO OS?

Hi
Thank you for reading my post.
I am looking to know whether I can get aT61 with discrete Graphic card and NO OS?
I dont like to pay for the OS as I will install Ubuntu.
Thanks
Solved!
Go to Solution.

No you can't, unless you're a corporate customer ordering (at least) several hundred pieces.
Cheers,
George
In daily use: R60F, R500F, T61, T410
Collecting dust: T60
Enjoying retirement: A31p, T42p,
Non-ThinkPads: Panasonic CF-31 & CF-52, HP 8760W
Starting Thursday, 08/14/2014 I'll be away from the forums until further notice. Please do NOT send private messages since I won't be able to read them. Thank you.

2010 Mac Pro with Apple RAID card - "Drive carrier 00:03 removed"

I've got a 2010 Mac Pro with the Apple RAID card and 4 internal identical Seagate ST32000641AS 2TB drives inside.
I've never had a problem with the RAID card (either battery or in operation) except for one thing:
Almost every time I shut the machine down (which I try to do as rarely as possible), it keeps losing Drive 3, the spare.
(See RAID Utility event log snippet below.)
[I wish I could understand why this Apple RAID card keeps losing the spare across power-cycles/reboots, but I digress.]
So I just adopted it as the spare and it spawns the rebuild and many hours later, everything's fine again.
... until the last time I rebooted (Jan. 2nd).
After the usual "I lost the spare" message upon login, it began the rebuild.
But this time, about 11 1/2 hours later the rebuild stopped and RAID Utility reported "Drive carrier 00:03 removed".
Bay 3 is now missing in the Controller view.
I powered off the system last night, and left it off overnight. Today I took all the drives out, blew the dust off and reseated them.
Same thing. Drive 3 is still missing, and now the rebuild task aborted.
The drive bay location shouldn't matter, right? Can I swap the Bay 3 drive with the Bay 4 drive?
I figure one of two things would happen:
(1) It will report Bay 3 as being there but Bay 4 as being missing, same situation as is now. Meaning the problem is in the Bay 3 spare drive.
(2) It will report Bay 3 as being missing (despite a 'good' drive being present) and Bay 4 will be the (unattached) spare, and the RAID set will be unviable. Meaning the problem is with the drive bay itself, not whatever drive is plugged into it.
If "Drive carrier removed" is trying to tell me the disk is bad, why do I not see any log messages about it? I suppose a spare that never gets used could go bad from lack of use, but ... no messages at all?
Hesitant to plunk down $160 on a new spare disk if the present one isn't actually dead ...
% sudo raidutil list raidsetinfo
                                     Total     Avail
Raidsets      Type       Drives       Size      Size Comments
RS1           RAID 5     1,2,4      5.23TB    0.00MB Rebuild: 0% complete
% sudo raidutil list driveinfo
Drives Raidset       Size      Flags
Bay #1 RS1             2.00TB   IsMemberOfRAIDSet:RS1 IsReliable
Bay #2 RS1             2.00TB   IsMemberOfRAIDSet:RS1 IsReliable
Bay #4 RS1             2.00TB   IsMemberOfRAIDSet:RS1 IsReliable
Event log snippet:
Saturday, January 11, 2014 8:15:19 AM PT
Background task aborted: Task=Rebuild,Scope=DRVGRP,Group=RS1
informational
Friday, January 3, 2014 3:50:28 AM PT
Drive carrier 00:03 removed
informational
Thursday, January 2, 2014 4:29:37 PM PT
Marked drive in bay 3 as a global spare
informational
Thursday, January 2, 2014 4:29:28 PM PT
Adopted drive in bay 3
informational
Thursday, January 2, 2014 4:28:34 PM PT
Degraded RAID set RS1 - No spare available for rebuild
critical
Saturday, December 7, 2013 5:35:17 PM PT
Marked drive in bay 3 as a global spare
informational
Saturday, December 7, 2013 5:35:08 PM PT
Adopted drive in bay 3
informational
Saturday, December 7, 2013 5:34:11 PM PT
The "RedundancyScrub" command could not be executed. (Invalid request or invalid parameter in the request.)
warning
Saturday, December 7, 2013 5:34:03 PM PT
Degraded RAID set RS1 - No spare available for rebuild
critical
Friday, December 6, 2013 4:56:47 AM PT
Battery finished conditioning
informational
Thursday, December 5, 2013 9:53:44 PM PT
Battery started scheduled conditioning cycle (write cache disabled)
informational
Friday, September 6, 2013 10:53:11 PM PT
Battery finished conditioning
informational
Friday, September 6, 2013 3:41:33 PM PT
Battery started scheduled conditioning cycle (write cache disabled)
informational
Saturday, June 8, 2013 3:41:35 PM PT
Battery finished conditioning
informational
Saturday, June 8, 2013 8:37:49 AM PT
Battery started scheduled conditioning cycle (write cache disabled)
informational
Thursday, May 30, 2013 4:09:51 PM PT
Marked drive in bay 3 as a global spare
informational
Thursday, May 30, 2013 4:09:42 PM PT
Adopted drive in bay 3
informational
Thursday, May 30, 2013 4:08:59 PM PT
Degraded RAID set RS1 - No spare available for rebuild
critical
Thursday, May 30, 2013 3:32:29 PM PT
Degraded RAID set RS1
warning

Power Pig wrote:
"Hesitant to plunk down $160 on a new spare disk if the present one isn't actually dead ...
% sudo raidutil list raidsetinfo
                                     Total     Avail
Raidsets      Type       Drives       Size      Size Comments
RS1           RAID 5     1,2,4      5.23TB    0.00MB Rebuild: 0% complete
I was talking about this.
This looks like a RAID 5 setup without the parity to me. I would said it basically a RAID 0.
Also you metioned "I guess that previous spare must really have gone 'bad', despite having never been used! "
I wiped everything out, I selected the 3 disks and clicked on "Create RAID Set" with RAID5 selected and the "Use unassigned drives as spares" option checked. The 3rd disk has always been marked as the spare ever since then. You do not have a choice to create a "RAID5 setup without the parity". If I wanted a RAID0 I would have chosen a RAID0! raidutil now says
% sudo raidutil list raidsetinfo
                                     Total     Avail
Raidsets      Type       Drives       Size      Size Comments
RS1           RAID 5     1,2,3,4    5.23TB    0.00MB No tasks running
Every time the system would 'lose' Drive 3 on boot, I would just keep rebooting until it was 'found', and then manually re-assign the now-'floating' drive as the spare - and the RAID would rebuild.
There was never a problem until the day that prompted this post - when it would not find Drive 3 no matter what I did. I turned the Mac Pro off for several hours until the drives had all cooled down and it still did not find the drive. I left the machine on but unmounted the degraded volume until I got the new replacement drive.
I really don't understand what you are getting at. It's like you are trying to tell me I set it up as a 4-drive RAID5 with no parity(!) and that I was in grave danger because one of the disks was gone. The actual RAID contents (spread across Drives 1, 2 and 4) were never in danger, unless a 2nd disk had failed while the spare was not seen by the Apple RAID card. I wasn't too worried about that happening.

XServe with hardware RAID card and headless install

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