WARNING: Apple RAID Card and Drive Firmware

[Transeau]

Just a warning to anyone else with the Apple RAID Card and the Seagate drives with defective firmware: BACK UP EVERYTHING

Once the firmware for the drives are updated (using a PC and the Seagate boot disk) the RAID Array is NO LONGER VALID.

The problem is that the drive model number, serial number and firmware version are all used to identify the drives. Once any one of those items change, the Apple RAID Card gets VERY confused and no longer sees the drives as an Array.

The first thing that happened to me was that the Mac Pro would simply keep rebooting and never even let me select an alternate drive to boot from. After a PRAM reset, the Mac Pro would just sit at the gray screen. I was able to pull each of the four 500GB Seagate ES.2 drives and boot from a 10.5.6 Install DVD.

After finally getting into the RAID Utility, I attached each drive one at a time and watched as they appeared in the Utility. Each drive was listed as "Roaming", no matter which bay they were in. They all passed SMART, but with all four in, they were all "part of another array".

I was finally forced to create a new array and a new logical volume.

At this point I think that Apple's policy of dumbing everything down and WAY over simplifying the RAID Utility is crap. Any other RAID card and utility would have been able to recover from this.

On the bright side, Time Machine works great and I'm very happy that my ReadyNAS supports it now.

 

[Rick Here]

Doesn't Apple have a utility from a Seagate to update the drives without having to remove them and update in a PC? This type of update may not cause this problem.
No such problem with the Western Digital drives.

 

[nanofrog]

Doesn't Apple have a utility from a Seagate to update the drives without having to remove them and update in a PC?

I've not seen one, and could have been extremely not too long ago.

If anyone has, a link would be really useful.

 

[goMac]

You can use the update CD in a Mac, no reason to have to use a PC.

It's just a boot cd.

 

[nanofrog]

You can use the update CD in a Mac, no reason to have to use a PC.

It's just a boot cd.

For updating firmware in a Seagate drive?

 

[Rick Here]

I've not seen one, and could have been extremely not too long ago.

If anyone has, a link would be really useful.

I haven't found one on the Apple site.
I guess you could pull a drive, update it in a PC, re-install in the RAID array, let the RAID rebuild this drive, then do the next drive. This may take a while but should work.

 

[nanofrog]

I haven't found one on the Apple site.
I guess you could pull a drive, update it in a PC, re-install in the RAID array, let the RAID rebuild this drive, then do the next drive. This may take a while but should work.

I wasn't able to find it on Seagate's site either.

Yes, pulling the drive and installing it into a PC will work, but only if the PC is available. (That was the problem at the time). Another way, is to use a laptop and eSATA card. Easier too. But again, it might not be available.

 

[rylin]

Once the firmware for the drives are updated (using a PC and the Seagate boot disk) the RAID Array is NO LONGER VALID.

So what?
So long as you don't initialize the array you're fine.
Just create a new array with the same properties as the old one and all your data will "magically" reappear.

 

[sidewinder]

So what?
So long as you don't initialize the array you're fine.
Just create a new array with the same properties as the old one and all your data will "magically" reappear.

Don't tell everyone all these secrets!

S-

 

[nanofrog]

Don't tell everyone all these secrets!

S-

It might affect one's employment!

 

[Transeau]

So what?
So long as you don't initialize the array you're fine.
Just create a new array with the same properties as the old one and all your data will "magically" reappear.

Have you tried that?

 

[hayduke]

I go back and forth about using a RAID card. Threads like this give me pause. To say the least...

 

[nanofrog]

I go back and forth about using a RAID card. Threads like this give me pause. To say the least...

I've not discovered a better way to truly learn than hands-on though.

It's best to experiment with new model(s) to find out how it actually behaves (failure simulations), rather than assume and botch things up to the point of total disaster. That doesn't change, no matter how much experience one has. (Before trusting data to it of course).

 

[UltraNEO*]

Just a warning to anyone else with the Apple RAID Card and the Seagate drives with defective firmware: BACK UP EVERYTHING

Once the firmware for the drives are updated (using a PC and the Seagate boot disk) the RAID Array is NO LONGER VALID.

The problem is that the drive model number, serial number and firmware version are all used to identify the drives. Once any one of those items change, the Apple RAID Card gets VERY confused and no longer sees the drives as an Array.

The first thing that happened to me was that the Mac Pro would simply keep rebooting and never even let me select an alternate drive to boot from. After a PRAM reset, the Mac Pro would just sit at the gray screen. I was able to pull each of the four 500GB Seagate ES.2 drives and boot from a 10.5.6 Install DVD.

After finally getting into the RAID Utility, I attached each drive one at a time and watched as they appeared in the Utility. Each drive was listed as "Roaming", no matter which bay they were in. They all passed SMART, but with all four in, they were all "part of another array".

I was finally forced to create a new array and a new logical volume.

At this point I think that Apple's policy of dumbing everything down and WAY over simplifying the RAID Utility is crap. Any other RAID card and utility would have been able to recover from this.

On the bright side, Time Machine works great and I'm very happy that my ReadyNAS supports it now.

At the end of the day by utilizing a RAID solution in your system isn't the "is all, end all" to keeping data safe. You need to make backups regardless of what sort of redundancy you have. Safety first man.

 

[TripHop]

2008 Mac Pro Raid Card Can't See 3TB HDs

Put a 3TB drive that was already full of an iTunes library from my 2.8 GHz 2008 Mac Pro into my 3.2 GHz Mac Pro with Apple RAID card and it thinks it's a 2.2GB HD that needs to be initialized. Wondering if Apple will update the firmware so 3TB drives can be seen like they can in my non-RAID card Mac Pro from the same generation 2008.

I tried to pull the RAID card. But then all the hard drives were not recognized at all - even as if they needed to be initialized. So I'm stuck with the Apple RAID card in my 3.2 GHz 2008 Mac Pro.

 

[reukiodo]

Doesn't the MP1-3 RAID card depend on moving the iPASS cable from logic board to RAID card to connect to the drives? Was the iPASS cable moved back to the logic board from the RAID card?

The MP4/5 passes the connection through the PCIe slot, so only remove the card is necessary.

 

[reukiodo]

I just learned the hard way that all of Apple's RAID cards only support 2.2TB on SATA drives. The only way to get beyond 2.2TB with their RAID card is to use SAS drives instead.

 

[flat4]

I just learned the hard way that all of Apple's RAID cards only support 2.2TB on SATA drives. The only way to get beyond 2.2TB with their RAID card is to use SAS drives instead.

So you can user SAS drives?

 

[reukiodo]

Originally found from https://www.reddit.com/r/xserve/comments/12c8z0k that it was possible, and shown later at https://www.reddit.com/r/xserve/comments/15pd2la to make modern large SAS drives work with the Apple RAID card.