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Warning: Apple Pro Raid Partition Disappeared

E

eksu

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 3, 2017
330
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Thought I'd give a warning to anyone considering getting an Apple Raid adapter; I've had mine for about two years, bought it for 20$ on eBay.

Today I discovered that although my Raid Set and Raid Volume still exist, there seems to be no partition on my Raid Set. I'm not sure how this happened, I'm still trying to figure out if I lost any data that isn't recoverable.

SAS domain tree in System Information is empty.
 
The battery has been 'precharging' for the whole life of the card; I was actually just about to order a LI on eBay without the power controls or whatever on it and solder it in as a replacement.
 
You on High Sierra or Mojave?

If Mojave, a client's machine had a similar incident that appears to be related to one of the recent updates that was installed. Needed to basically reset everything and restore from a clone, despite the both drives (Samsung SSDs) functioning properly. Drives were formatted HFS+ and were removed from the system for the initial Mojave install. They were kept in the system for the Mojave update and I suspect that is where the issue occurred, but cannot 100% confirm.
 
Ok, I have a time machine backup to work with. I’m on 10.14.0 for HEVC encoding. So I should smc/nvram reset, do the restore/install from time machine with the raid card and drives removed and then add them back after?

I don’t think I lost any critical data, although some of my Apple lossless audio files are only backed up as AAC in iTunes Match. Definitely makes me think of using the PCIE slot for something else.

EDIT: I’m just going to do smc, nvram resets then boot from usb installed, and if the installer doesn’t see the partition I’ll call it a loss.
 
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No dice. Upon removing the pro raid card and rebooting, my Power Supply fan & PCIE fan now run at 100% until I log in and Mac Fan Control takes over. I’ll try another SMC reset. Weirdness.

It’s on a 4.1 -> 5.1.
 
Are you positive the CR2032 battery on the logic board is good? They last 5-7 years max.
 
bsbeamer said:
Are you positive the CR2032 battery on the logic board is good? They last 5-7 years max.
Click to expand...

I think they were referring to the raid battery. Do you think the CR2032 battery would make a difference?
 
eksu said:
I think they were referring to the raid battery. Do you think the CR2032 battery would make a difference?
Click to expand...

With SMC reset issues, it could be. If you've never replaced that battery, it would not hurt swapping out at this point.
 
Yes, you are 100% correct on BR2032 being the OEM. For some reason local Apple support tech (in-store) replaced 4,1 with CR2032 on in-warranty business repair for failed logic board in 2010 or 2011. They work, but likely are not ideal.
 
I should add I reset the SMC and the fans went back to normal.
 
bsbeamer said:
Yes, you are 100% correct on BR2032 being the OEM. For some reason local Apple support tech (in-store) replaced 4,1 with CR2032 on in-warranty business repair for failed logic board in 2010 or 2011. They work, but likely are not ideal.
Click to expand...
With Mac Pro, it's easy to replace and it's tolerable to replace it frequently. With Mac minis, if you use CR2032 batteries you will have to replace it every 6 months and it's a lot of trouble to do it.
 
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The second SMC reset was after removing the drives and pro raid card. I can re-insert all of them and test soon.
 
Data still gone. Wondering if I should keep the drives around and order another raid card or not just to see what happens. Raid card seems to be operational, so I'm not sure if whatever happened happened at that level.
 

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Anybody know of a utility to show the 2032 voltage?
Would be nice if we could see it in software to know if it needs replacement.
 
Trying to think of how I would go through some forensics to recover the data, seeing as the drive isn't exposed to me until I create a partition on it.

I think I need to create a blank partition, then scan that to see if any of the files come through.

Any thoughts on a better way to do this?
 
Do you have a backup of the data? It’s a lot easier to restore from that than trying to recover from “failed” RAID, especially if Mojave messed with file system.
 
eksu said:
Trying to think of how I would go through some forensics to recover the data, seeing as the drive isn't exposed to me until I create a partition on it.

I think I need to create a blank partition, then scan that to see if any of the files come through.

Any thoughts on a better way to do this?
Click to expand...
Experience with other RAID hardware makes me believe that creating a blank partition (or any writes to the volume) will delete everything on the volume.
 
The weird thing with the partition disappearing is the RAID set & volume are still there, it's just an empty volume. I suppose I do have to delete the volume and re-create it in order to get MacOS to expose a disk device to me.

Maybe it would be best to leave it be for now, and to try to order a new raid card and see if the issue is at that level.
 
eksu said:
The weird thing with the partition disappearing is the RAID set & volume are still there, it's just an empty volume. I suppose I do have to delete the volume and re-create it in order to get MacOS to expose a disk device to me.

Maybe it would be best to leave it be for now, and to try to order a new raid card and see if the issue is at that level.
Click to expand...

The only way to salvage the drives (so they could be used in any capacity) for the issue with my client's machine was to reformat them. Attempted to re-establish a RAID and clone data from a recent backup. It was working fine that day, but apparently is still not flawless. I've told them to make sure data is backed up daily (and more if possible). That particular machine is likely being downgraded to High Sierra in January after the holiday. Does not seem to be worth the hassle for virtually no added benefits in the OS vs. High Sierra for this machine.

Mojave just seems to be terrible with internal RAIDs of any kind. Even two internal direct SATA bay connected drives setup in RAID0 (no controller) have disappeared in Mojave on numerous occasions. External controlled hardware RAIDs appear to function fine.
 
Wow, so RAID is unsafe in Mojave. Can I open a bug report with Apple, although I’m on a 2009?

If I start using Software RAID 1, I imagine if I loose the RAID array the data would still be there on both drives? Or maybe it’s best to buy another device to move my archival files to.
 
Depending on your situation and how much/frequently the data is changing, I personally prefer to setup Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) to clone to another drive at certain increments (such as every 30min or 60min) vs. using the OS to setup as a RAID1. The CCC software can be setup to just update changed files on the clone and there are even some features in SafetyNet to further backup your data (such as easy deleted file recovery). Find that to be more useful and it would not rely on the OS's buggy RAID implementation in Mojave.
 
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I’m still interested in recovering my iTunes Library from RAID (had some ALAC files that are backed up through iTunes Match to AAC), but if RAID really is unstable I’ll install Windows Server 2019 and virtualize MacOS on this machine.

I wonder if it’s because a lot of raid functionality is being shifted to T1/T2 co-processors.

Does anyone else have more reports or info about RAID on Mojave?

For now I just have my experience, would could be a failing raid card, and then one report.
 
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