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Apple RAID card - need answer!

thanks again. i think i am finally set!

i am going to put up another thread to about those SAS drives...ya...they are just a little bit expensive.
 
ok...started reading about SAS drives and it turns out that you can run them seperate with raid drives. so that got me thinking...why not SATA drives?

so i called apple. waited for about an hour and a half and found out that my original advice that I could not run individual drives with my raid card configured to my ipass on the logic board is incorrect. you simply tell the raid utility what drives you want raided and thats it.

so i certainly can run 4 internal drives with two on raid 0 with my raid card connected by ipass.

i'm not sure why you think otherwise stangboy.
 
Bass108 said:
ok...started reading about SAS drives and it turns out that you can run them seperate with raid drives. so that got me thinking...why not SATA drives?

so i called apple. waited for about an hour and a half and found out that my original advice that I could not run individual drives with my raid card configured to my ipass on the logic board is incorrect. you simply tell the raid utility what drives you want raided and thats it.

so i certainly can run 4 internal drives with two on raid 0 with my raid card connected by ipass.

i'm not sure why you think otherwise stangboy.
Click to expand...

I'm not entirely sure that I'm understanding you properly. What I tried to convey earlier, and I'm standing by it is that you cannot split up what you're doing with your internal drives. For example, all four internal drives must either go to the RAID Card or to the logic board iPass connector as those four drives share a single iPass connector.

Please tell me exactly what you're planning on doing, internal vs. external, hardware raid vs. software raid, etc. I think the wordiness of these posts is leading to some confusion.

I'm not sure what happens with any unused drives connected to the RAID Card. They may very well show up in disk utility for use individually. I can't confirm or deny it since I went to a four drive raid5 right away.
 
i'm sorry stang. there was a misunderstanding on my part, and some bad choices made with the way i worded my question. but here is exactly what i am trying to do.

4 internal drives
~1 program drive
~1 audio TB storage drive
~2 sampler drives in RAID 0

now, i guess all of them going to the RAID card through the ipass with no problems

when i started the post i was trying to do the audio drive with a RAID 1 config with the external drives. After understand how the card and a cableless mac works I know that I can't do that easily...i am much happier with the above, more simplistic, setup now.

though if i did decide to go external with the RAID 0 config how exactly do i disconnect the raid from the internal drives on the ipass? is it simple and easy enough? i'm sure i will find out with the manual soon enough...but this may be something that i change later.

thanks and i am ecstatic that i know what i am going to do with this mac finally
 
65StangBoy said:
The ODD_SATA ports are not visible when using Bootcamp unfortunately. It's possible but you'll have to use a patched version of Grub to boot Windows. The easiest way, and the way I do it, is to use the logic board iPass connector to run your drive externally. I can confirm that this works perfectly.

I'm in the process of getting my ODD_SATA ports to work in Windows so that I can use my two SATA burners in XP. Check out this thread for more details. They're talking about getting them to work in Windows software raid but it also applies in our situation. We just need those ports to be in AHCI mode instead of Legacy IDE.

http://forum.onmac.net/showthread.php?t=2739
Click to expand...


65StangBoy, I'm curious if you've had any luck getting the ODD_SATA ports to work for you in AHCI under XP. I'm not doing exactly the same thing as you, but something similar: I'm trying to run an internal hard drive off the ODD_SATA port that has three OS partitions on it: OS X, Ubuntu and XP.

I followed the same instructions above and got the drive to function under AHCI for both Ubuntu and XP, but only when it's in one of the four built-in bays. As soon as I connect to the ODD_SATA, I can't see the drive or controller in Ubuntu or XP. In fact, I get an error message from rEFIt that tells me: "Error: not found returned from legacy loader" (By the way, OS X comes up fine off that drive even when connected to the ODD_SATA port. So it looks like that still works, for those who were asking.)

Were you able to get your ODD_SATA ports seen under XP? Has anyone else had any luck with this on the Early 2008 Mac Pro's?

Thanks,
efury
 
Are there any less expensive alternative RAID cards for the Mac Pro besides the pricey one Apple sells?

I need something that will run RAID 5 on four internal drives and is bootable into 0SX. Paying something less than the $800 Apple charges would be great.
 
efury said:
65StangBoy, I'm curious if you've had any luck getting the ODD_SATA ports to work for you in AHCI under XP. I'm not doing exactly the same thing as you, but something similar: I'm trying to run an internal hard drive off the ODD_SATA port that has three OS partitions on it: OS X, Ubuntu and XP.

I followed the same instructions above and got the drive to function under AHCI for both Ubuntu and XP, but only when it's in one of the four built-in bays. As soon as I connect to the ODD_SATA, I can't see the drive or controller in Ubuntu or XP. In fact, I get an error message from rEFIt that tells me: "Error: not found returned from legacy loader" (By the way, OS X comes up fine off that drive even when connected to the ODD_SATA port. So it looks like that still works, for those who were asking.)

Were you able to get your ODD_SATA ports seen under XP? Has anyone else had any luck with this on the Early 2008 Mac Pro's?

Thanks,
efury
Click to expand...

I finally got it to work this weekend. I don't think you'll be able to use those ports to boot Ubuntu/XP. They don't become "live" until you boot using GRUB with the modified stage1. I'm using the ports to run two SATA DVD burners and boot GRUB/Ubuntu/XP off of one of the regular internal ports. The reason you can boot OSX off of the ODD_SATA ports is that you're not using the EFI CSM (which sets those ports to Legacy IDE instead of AHCI). If you can get GRUB installed on one of the regular internal drives, you could then point it at the drive connected to the ODD_SATA port.

I have an old Mac Pro so I'm not entirely sure how that relates to the new one. I've heard from a couple people that the ODD_SATA ports don't work, you're saying that they do. There might be firmware differences requiring a different stage1.
 
65StangBoy,

Thanks for the reply. Glad to hear you got it working. I had considered that it might be fixed in firmware to only come up in AHCI without Legacy IDE support. Thanks for the confirmation. Well, I guess I'll have to go back to the drawing board. I was hoping to use the internal bays to connect to an Atto RAID card via the iPass connector, then boot off the 5th drive connected to the ODD_SATA port. It seems I may have to keep them in place and find another solution.

Regarding the ODD_SATA ports working on the new Mac Pros, I can at least confirm that it works for OS X. I moved the original 320GB drive (which I had already made tri-boot) from the internal bays to the optical bay and connected it to the ODD_SATA port. Worked fine under OS X.

efury
 
You could always do what I'm doing. I have my four internal drives going to the Apple RAID Card, then I have four eSata drives running to the iPass connector on the Logic Board. The computer doesn't know that they're external and treats them just like they're installed inside the machine. Then I use the two ODD_SATA ports for my DVD burners.

Edit: Now that I think about it, if you only need five drives (4-RAID, 1-Boot) you could just run a cable from the Logic Board iPass connector up to the optical drive bay. This is the cable that I currently have and it works fine. Then you wouldn't even have to go external.

http://www.newark.com/jsp/search/productdetail.jsp?SKU=13M3656
 
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