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Has anyone successfully set up an areca RAID card with '10 Mac Pros?

P

psychometry

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 5, 2006
123
0
I just installed an areca ARC-1212 into my new Mac Pro and there's a weird problem with the setup process.

When booting from the setup CD, it asks me to press tab or F6 to enter setup, or ESC to cancel. None of these keys work on this screen.

If yo dou nothing, however, you get to a Knoppix splash screen that lets you press Enter to boot to Linux. The Enter key works here (though it takes me to a black screen rather than booting Linux).

Do I need to find a Windows keyboard to these keys to work on that first screen?
 
No. You can't access the firmware directly in a MP.

Install the card (includes getting the drivers loaded), and access the settings via a browser (BTW, use FireFox, not Safari; it doesn't play well with others).

Also, if you want to boot from it, you need to flash the firmware to EFI, as the default firmware is BIOS. If you don't need to boot, you can skip this if you wish, as it will still work once the drivers are installed.
 
Thanks, nanofrog. I got my 2xSSD RAID0 set up and working.

Using a non-striped drive running OS X that's also in my machine, I tested my RAID with Xbench and am getting 1250 MB/s uncached sequential writes and 250 MB/s random writes.

However, when I try to copy actual files to the RAID (like the contents of /Applications at around 400MB) it takes more than a minute. Trying to install OS X on the RAID, since I plan on using it as my boot drive, was taking so long I gave up. Any ideas?
 
I should also add that I can make a 1GB file in Terminal using mkfile in about a second. I really don't understand why copying from another volume (whether it's that other HDD or the OS X disc) is so ridiculously slow.
 
psychometry said:
Thanks, nanofrog. I got my 2xSSD RAID0 set up and working.

Using a non-striped drive running OS X that's also in my machine, I tested my RAID with Xbench and am getting 1250 MB/s uncached sequential writes and 250 MB/s random writes.

However, when I try to copy actual files to the RAID (like the contents of /Applications at around 400MB) it takes more than a minute. Trying to install OS X on the RAID, since I plan on using it as my boot drive, was taking so long I gave up. Any ideas?
Click to expand...
1. Have you flashed the Firmware on the card to EFI (need this before it will boot)?
2. Did you format the array (HSF/+)?
3. What settings are you using?

It's also possible that the card and the SSD's won't play well together (don't know the models you're using). I know Areca's will work with Intel's, but they've not yet tested out with other brands that I'm aware of (they tested Intel's on an ARC-1231ML = SATA only unit, but it's firmware is similar as the unit you've got; current revision for all models = 1.48, but there are variations such as port counts that make it model specific).
 
I am using the 1221X card. I noticed that there are native Areca drivers on the 10.6 install disk that came with the 2010 MP since my raid volumes were mounted after a fresh install. I was getting I/O errors trying to clone a partition to one of the raid volumes. This problem was solved by installing the driver from Areca. Give that a try if you havent already.

Here is the link:
http://www.areca.com.tw/support/s_macos/macos.htm
 
If you're flashing the firmware and everything… just a note:
From experience the best way is BootROM—>Firmware—>MasterBootROM—>BIOS—>EFI [then reboot]

I don't think it should really matter, but it seems to break if I do it any other way.

You can flash everything while your systems are alive [and booted into the OS].
 
OK, I finally got OS X installed onto the stripe. Apparently the status bar and "___ minutes remaining" on the installer screen is incredibly inaccurate. The next time I tried, it sat at "54 minutes" for almost 15 minutes and five minutes later it was done. Truly bizarre.
 
psychometry said:
I just installed an areca ARC-1212 into my new Mac Pro and there's a weird problem with the setup process.

When booting from the setup CD, it asks me to press tab or F6 to enter setup, or ESC to cancel. None of these keys work on this screen.

If yo dou nothing, however, you get to a Knoppix splash screen that lets you press Enter to boot to Linux. The Enter key works here (though it takes me to a black screen rather than booting Linux).

Do I need to find a Windows keyboard to these keys to work on that first screen?
Click to expand...

Please help me.
How did you physical installed ARC-1212 in MacPro (Mid 2012?)

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cristian.huiu said:
Please help me.
How did you physical installed ARC-1212 in MacPro (Mid 2012?)
Click to expand...

sorry..i mea MacPro Mid 2010 ! :)
 
cristian.huiu said:
Please help me.
How did you physical installed ARC-1212 in MacPro (Mid 2012?)

----------



sorry..i mea MacPro Mid 2010 ! :)
Click to expand...

It's simple plug and play. Slide the card into the PCIe slot, attach the SAS expander cables to the drives you need and it's all good.

I have the MaxUpgrades tray and that works pretty well for me.
 
He's asked the same question in another thread, which which I answered.

BTW, it's not quite plug-n-play if the boot volume is relocated (i.e. attach all 4x HDD bays to the card), but it's not that difficult either. ;)
 
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