Two different 2008 Mac Pros, 2 different Raid Cards, no HDDs

[technotica]

Hi!

I have a really stupid problem that I can't seem to fix.

We have several Mac Pros here (early 2008). One of these had a Apple Raid Card (A1247 EMC 2156) and four HDDs in a raid.

One day the Mac Pro just stopped working and after restarting it it had lost all harddrives.

Now after many tries to get it to recognize the harddrives again I bought another raid card (same model) via eBay thinking the one we had micht be broken.

I tried both cards in the broken down Mac Pro, the cards would be recognized but none of the disks or any other hdds I put in there are shown in either the raid manager or the disk utility software.

If I start the mac without a raid card and with the iPass cable back on the motherboard the hdds are recognized.

So I thought maybe the Mac Pro is the problem and installed the card in another Mac Pro, but there the same problem happens, again with either raid card.

So regardless of what I use, with either raid card installed the mac won't show any hdds (even brand new ones) connected.

I am not very well versed in the macs raid functionality, am I missing something?

Shouldn't I just have to connect the raid card, plugin the hdds and then be able to use them?

It's as if I had't connected the iPass cable, but I did...


If anyone has any ideas of what I could do I'd be really grateful!

 

[GermanyChris]

Hi!

I have a really stupid problem that I can't seem to fix.

We have several Mac Pros here (early 2008). One of these had a Apple Raid Card (A1247 EMC 2156) and four HDDs in a raid.

One day the Mac Pro just stopped working and after restarting it it had lost all harddrives.

Now after many tries to get it to recognize the harddrives again I bought another raid card (same model) via eBay thinking the one we had micht be broken.

I tried both cards in the broken down Mac Pro, the cards would be recognized but none of the disks or any other hdds I put in there are shown in either the raid manager or the disk utility software.

If I start the mac without a raid card and with the iPass cable back on the motherboard the hdds are recognized.

So I thought maybe the Mac Pro is the problem and installed the card in another Mac Pro, but there the same problem happens, again with either raid card.

So regardless of what I use, with either raid card installed the mac won't show any hdds (even brand new ones) connected.

I am not very well versed in the macs raid functionality, am I missing something?

Shouldn't I just have to connect the raid card, plugin the hdds and then be able to use them?

It's as if I had't connected the iPass cable, but I did...


If anyone has any ideas of what I could do I'd be really grateful!

The RAID card battery?

 

[technotica]

Hmm, won't it see any hard drives if its charging?

If so then that would be a really simple problem I guess!

I guess I then jsut have to keep it in the computer and wait for it to be fully charged?

Thanks!

 

[GermanyChris]

Hmm, won't it see any hard drives if its charging?

If so then that would be a really simple problem I guess!

I guess I then jsut have to keep it in the computer and wait for it to be fully charged?

Thanks!

They need to be replaced on occasion, I believe every three years or so. Please keep in mind that this is just a guess. The only time I had a RAID card do what you're describing the RAM module went bad.

 

[technotica]

Hmm, the card is definitely older than 3 years, I'll let the 'new' one recharge and see if that helps. It tells me the battery is charging and write cache is disabled.

I am crossing my fingers that thats the problem, it would be so easy if it were

If the battery was broken it would show an error in the raid utility wouldn't it? Or does it simply charge forever?

 

[nigelbb]

With a dead battery you should still see all the disks but the write cache will be disabled. This is for data integrity reasons as for maximum speed the data is written to the RAM cache on the RAID card & then a lazy write is done to the actual disk but the write completion is signalled to the OS as soon as the data is in the cache. If you have a power fail before the data is written to disk then your data is now inconsistent. The battery is supposed to keep data live in the cache memory for many house (days even) until power is restored & the data can be properly written to the hard disk.

However a dead battery is not your problem.

 

[technotica]

Yep, the battery is charged now, the status is good but no hard drives. None, not even brand new ones are shown.

Maybe the port for the cable on the card is broken, but it would be a really big coincidence if the card I bought off ebay had the exact same problem as the one I had here...

If it's not the hard drives, nor the cable (works on the motherboard) and the card shows up as functioning, the port is the only thing left isn't it?