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Decommissioning Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro - Maintain RAID how?

T

thornslack

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 16, 2013
410
165
Hi folks,

I have 4,1 to 5,1 classic Mac Pro with a Tempo SSD Pro PCIe card installed with two drives in RAID 0 as my main boot volume for OSX 10.9.5. I initially raided the cards on the backplane of the mac and then installed them on the sonnet card, and everything has been fine.

Now I'd like to remove the card and return to using a software raid to maintain my boot volume, with the two SSDs once again on the backplane of the mac.

So, my question is, since Sonnet had no clue, will OSX recognize the RAID 0 and maintain it if I put the drives on the backplane, or will I have to clone the volume, move the drives to the backplane, recreate the software RAID, and then re-clone the data back onto the drives? (I hope not)

I've had other SATA volumes installed in the bays since creating the RAID if that matters. This is obscure I realize, but if anyone has a constructive thought I'd love to hear. Thanks!
 
thornslack said:
Hi folks,

I have 4,1 to 5,1 classic Mac Pro with a Tempo SSD Pro PCIe card installed with two drives in RAID 0 as my main boot volume for OSX 10.9.5. I initially raided the cards on the backplane of the mac and then installed them on the sonnet card, and everything has been fine.

Now I'd like to remove the card and return to using a software raid to maintain my boot volume, with the two SSDs once again on the backplane of the mac.

So, my question is, since Sonnet had no clue, will OSX recognize the RAID 0 and maintain it if I put the drives on the backplane, or will I have to clone the volume, move the drives to the backplane, recreate the software RAID, and then re-clone the data back onto the drives? (I hope not)

I've had other SATA volumes installed in the bays since creating the RAID if that matters. This is obscure I realize, but if anyone has a constructive thought I'd love to hear. Thanks!
Click to expand...

If the two SSD's were built using OSX RAID 0 outside of the sonnet card on the backplane, then returning them to the backplane will be fine. If I am fully understanding, you built it with Software Raid in OSX, you installed it into the Sonnet and are actually still using software RAID (my guess is that the sonnet tempo just thinks they are two separate SSD's and isn't doing anything fancy with them) and moving it back to the backplane will continue to use Software RAID 0.

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you did?
 
Thanks for the reply. For whatever reason, at least at the time I purchased the Sonnet card, you couldn't actually format the RAID with the SSDs installed on the card. Another thread on these forums (this one) detailed those issues, and Sonnets resolution was to create the desired RAID format on the backplane and then move the the SSDs onto the card. Once there, the hardware controller on the card should maintain the RAID, relieving OSX of that duty. Anyhow, that was my understanding.

So in regards to my question, in order for OSX to maintain the RAID on the existing drives, I assume I'd have to place them in the original order back onto the backplane and hope that OSX auto detects the RAID and maintains it. I suspect I'm going to just have to clone the volume, cross my fingers, and start trying, but I'd love for someone to tell me it's gonna work :)
 
The Sonnet Tempo Pro has no hardware RAID controller, your RAID-0 was created with OS X software RAID which is transportable to any JBOD type of environment, internal or external. This is one of the benefits of using software RAID! :)
 
Last edited:
thornslack said:
Thanks for the reply. For whatever reason, at least at the time I purchased the Sonnet card, you couldn't actually format the RAID with the SSDs installed on the card. Another thread on these forums (this one) detailed those issues, and Sonnets resolution was to create the desired RAID format on the backplane and then move the the SSDs onto the card. Once there, the hardware controller on the card should maintain the RAID, relieving OSX of that duty. Anyhow, that was my understanding.

So in regards to my question, in order for OSX to maintain the RAID on the existing drives, I assume I'd have to place them in the original order back onto the backplane and hope that OSX auto detects the RAID and maintains it. I suspect I'm going to just have to clone the volume, cross my fingers, and start trying, but I'd love for someone to tell me it's gonna work :)
Click to expand...

As I previously stated, you built the RAID0 with Mac OSX RAID 0, you then moved them to another controller still using Mac OSX RAID 0, and all you are going to do is move them back.... no issues.
 
Ah, thanks all. I'm not sure why I thought this card had its own RAID controller, but I guess its really just providing a set of high speed SATA interfaces. More of a hybrid software RAID solution I guess. I need to think over how I want to configure my internal layout, but it sounds promising that I could simply move the SSDs back onto the SATA II ports on the backplane. Once I make moves I'll report back how it goes. Thanks again!
 
After installing the drives back into slots 1 and 2 on the backplane the computer booted up no problem, RAID 0 maintained. Hooray! So glad I don't need to reimage things, even if I am back to ~500 MB reads =/

Thanks again for all the helpful info!
 
thornslack said:
After installing the drives back into slots 1 and 2 on the backplane the computer booted up no problem, RAID 0 maintained. Hooray! So glad I don't need to reimage things, even if I am back to ~500 MB reads =/

Thanks again for all the helpful info!
Click to expand...

You can even put them in a external dual drive Thunderbolt enclosure and they will continue to work in RAID-0 just fine! :)

I prefer Thunderbolt, but USB3 and FireWire should work as well.
 
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