Mac Pro RAID

[jersey9]

I just upgraded to a MAC PRO yesterday and tried to install a software RAID from the get go. My plan was to install three Seagate 300 gb drives behind the Apple installed 250 and create a mirror on two of them for a while to see how it worked. Problem was that with the three Seagates installed the Mac would not boot - or, maybe it would but I might not live long enough to see it. By this I mean it seemed to be VERY slow and actually made it through a partial boot over a couple of hours while I was away.

I tried to isolate a bad drive and removed all Seagates - the Mac booted in what I consider a normal cycle (Like I said, I just got it). As i added back the Seagates one at a time, there seemed to be progress, but the added drives still seem to be very flaky and I would not put any data on them yet.

Anyone got any ideas?

Thanks

 

[CanadaRAM]

Not enough data to give an opinion. You may have a defective drive, or the connections to the drives might not be being made properly somehow.

If you install the Seagates one at a time, format them normally and test them, what results? Once you have done that, when you install both as individual drives, what results?

Some Seagates have issues with Mac G5 and MacPro machines with certain versions of the firmware. Google Mac Seagate Firmware. But that just results in slower writing speeds than there should be - not overall issues.

 

[jersey9]

More data

I continue to work this and since the last post - i did just that. I unplugged each and started with the drive in postion 2 - With the others out, the Pro booted snappily and the new Seagatge drive showed up. I erased it and verified it in utilities - then shut down and went to the next one - position 3 - this one reported errors a couple of times - then I tried verifying the OEM drive (it was fine) but after that the other new Seagate verified and was fine. I did the same to position 4 and it was fine. I reinstalled all three of the newer drives and tried to boot - it is still trying to come up - it is processing the boot sequence extremely slow (about five or six minutes so far and I am still not sure it will finish...

 

[jersey9]

Mac Pro boot

The machine boots and mounts all four drives - but here is the bad news - the boot takes 26 minutes

 

[CanadaRAM]

A drive does not generally 'cure' itself of errors, although tests do fail to catch errors. A complete surface scan test would take hours.

I would treat the one that had a 'few' errors on initializing as defective and get it replaced. Try also a known-good drive in position 3 to make sure it is not a problem with the connectors in that bay.

 

[jersey9]

Another drive

I have another drive - I am going to try it in position 3 and see if it is the problem. I can say the Mac boots fast with that drive out of the machine. Wonder what the chances are that the channel in the SATA card is the problem - probably an order of magnitude less than it would be the drive. It was a refurb machine though..

 

[jersey9]

More information

The plot thickens here a bit - i put a new drive in position 3 and when all four drives are installed the boot up problem continues - but when I remove any of the drives other than the Apple supplied drive - the machine works fine. I was thinking maybe a bad channel - but seemingly not as the position 3 drive performs if either 2 or 4 are not installed. Any ideas?

 

[slughead]

sounds like it could be a bad mobo

 

[jersey9]

Progress thus far

After the last post - I decided to test all of the drives again - on this sequence the orginal drive would not verify and would not repair. I tried to completely restore it with the supplied DVD but it would not permit me to relaod OS X.

By the way - this drive was a Seagate as well (a 250gb) I replaced the Apple supplied drive with one of my Seagate 300's and loaded OS X on this one. To this point (about a day) it is working with the Apple RAID installed - but it still takes a long time to boot up (about five or six minutes).

Last night after running for about three hours - I verifed the RAID and the Disk Util showed a damaged RAID - I used the software to repair and rebuild overnight and so far, after one boot up this AM it is working and verifies.

I am still wondering if it is the Seagate drives or the APPLE RAID software or something else.

How does this five to six minute boot time match up with others with a MAC PRO (2gb memory and RAID) anybody have the same experience in time to use?