Mac Pro 2008 SLS conflict with Sil3132 eSATA RAID card?

[fhturner]

Hey Everybody—

I've just set a client up w/ a 2008 Mac Pro running Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Server. This server also runs Retrospect, backing up to eSATA hard drives. Here are all of the specs:

Mac Pro 2008
2.8GHz 8-core
8GB RAM
2x1TB internal RAID1
Mac OS X 10.6.8 Server
Retrospect v11.5.3

This eSATA PCIe card: PCIe x1 2-port eSATA RAID w/ Silicon Image 3132 chip
Driver version 1.7.5.0 (from Silicon Image site)
1.5TB Fantom Green Drives w/ USB/FW/eSATA​

When ejecting and disconnecting one backup drive to switch to the other disk, the machine hangs, then eventually restarts itself, as per the Energy Saver settings. Obviously, for a server machine, this is a Particularly Bad Thing™.

I wondered if the kernel mode might have something to do with it, so yesterday I changed from 32-bit mode to 64-bit mode; no difference. This system should have already been in 64-bit mode by default, according to Apple docs, but it was not.

I have this same card working w/o issue in a similar setup, but w/ the following differences:

Mac Pro 2006, 2.66GHz Quad w/ 3GB RAM [32-bit kernel]
LaCie quad-interface backup drives
​

Should I just ditch this eSATA card and try another? I hate to go to that trouble and then find out it's something to do w/ the drive enclosures or system/kernel/driver. Does anyone have any anecdotal info about these components working together? Or any ideas why the card works fine in the other setup but not this one?

Thanks!
Fred

 

[NOTNlCE]

I'm interested in your findings here. I'm looking for an eSATA card myself, and $11 is quite the price point. Have you tried swapping the functioning card into the 2008 machine, on the off chance that you happened to receive a bad card? Perhaps another $11 for a new card is all you need to avoid the Particularly Bad Thing™.

 

[fhturner]

Good thoughts, NOTNICE, but both Mac Pros and their eSATA cards are "production" servers, so trying the other card isn't really feasible. And while it's certainly true that I *could* have gotten a bad card, I'm not crazy about the prospect of: ordering another, waiting for it to arrive, taking it to the client site to install, waiting for the client to live-test it and then tell me we're in the exact same boat. I was kinda hoping my problem description might ring a bell for someone here, or that there might be some conventional wisdom that would shed some light on what's going on w/ it. If all else fails, I've got yet another client's 2008 Mac Pro 8-core running SLS that has the NewerTech USB3 + eSATA card installed, and that works fine; so I guess I could order that, despite it being a bit of overkill vs. this $11 card that's working elsewhere.

Thx,
Fred

 

[TzunamiOSX]

I would say: looks like the card does not support hot-plug.

 

[fhturner]

I would say: looks like the card does not support hot-plug.

Wouldn't that be a function of the Sil3132 chipset on the card? And if the other identical card in the 2006 Mac Pro hot-plugs/swaps w/o issue, shouldn't this one as well?

 

[fhturner]

It never occurred to me before, but when I was looking at info for a different eSATA card, I was reminded of a chipset incompatibility w/ some drive enclosures and Mac OS X via eSATA. Those drives that use the Oxford OXU931DS chipset cause kernel panics or lack of recognition of the drive by the OS. See Technical Note #1 under Technical Specifications tab on this product page:

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_sata_e4p.html

That sounds exactly like what I'm seeing, although I think the Fantom drives we used there are triple- or quad-interface (including FireWire). Perhaps the same chip is used in parallel w/ a FireWire chip. I intend to open the case and have a look when I'm there next, hopefully this week.