Just wanted to post a couple of bits here about the 2009 RAID Card you can install in the 2009, 2010 and '2012' Mac Pro, based on my limited experience so far.
- Don't worry about installing it, it doesn't mess with your current setup, and requires you to poke around in RAID Utility before it'll do anything.
- Raid Utility will keep launching at login so long as you have status messages you've not dismissed.
- Apple states that Apple HDDs are required. This doesn't appear to be true; I've set up an Enhanced JBOD single drive on a bog standard 2Tb Seagate drive bought seperately, assigned it a volume, repartitioned it and currently use it as a Time Machine backup. I'll be buying some more drives and testing them out in proper RAID configurations soon.
- Apple states this won't work in tandem with BootCamp. This is sort of true; you can't boot from a BootCamp partition with the RAID card installed, nor I imagine create a BootCamp partition in the first place. The issue is that the RAID card assumes control of HDD Bays 1-4, but for obvious reasons, leaves the ODD bays alone, so to get round this, create your BootCamp partition in Bay 1 as normal, turn off your machine, install the RAID card, and move the HDD in Bay 1 to your spare ODD bay. You can get 3.5 - 5.25in drive adapters very cheaply, and there are even spare screws hidden in the ODD mounting bracket round the back!
As a side note it's worth pointing out Windows won't recognise your RAID Card, so any partitions you might want to access from Bays 1-4 are rendered inaccessible.
- Sleep may act a bit odd. This is because the system won't sleep until the battery is conditioned properly, (and since mine seems to be dead, it'll never sleep properly until I remove it, or swap out the battery). For a list of less likely reasons, check here.
That's all I can think of at the moment, I'll update this post when I mess around installing more drives.
- Don't worry about installing it, it doesn't mess with your current setup, and requires you to poke around in RAID Utility before it'll do anything.
- Raid Utility will keep launching at login so long as you have status messages you've not dismissed.
- Apple states that Apple HDDs are required. This doesn't appear to be true; I've set up an Enhanced JBOD single drive on a bog standard 2Tb Seagate drive bought seperately, assigned it a volume, repartitioned it and currently use it as a Time Machine backup. I'll be buying some more drives and testing them out in proper RAID configurations soon.
- Apple states this won't work in tandem with BootCamp. This is sort of true; you can't boot from a BootCamp partition with the RAID card installed, nor I imagine create a BootCamp partition in the first place. The issue is that the RAID card assumes control of HDD Bays 1-4, but for obvious reasons, leaves the ODD bays alone, so to get round this, create your BootCamp partition in Bay 1 as normal, turn off your machine, install the RAID card, and move the HDD in Bay 1 to your spare ODD bay. You can get 3.5 - 5.25in drive adapters very cheaply, and there are even spare screws hidden in the ODD mounting bracket round the back!
As a side note it's worth pointing out Windows won't recognise your RAID Card, so any partitions you might want to access from Bays 1-4 are rendered inaccessible.
- Sleep may act a bit odd. This is because the system won't sleep until the battery is conditioned properly, (and since mine seems to be dead, it'll never sleep properly until I remove it, or swap out the battery). For a list of less likely reasons, check here.
That's all I can think of at the moment, I'll update this post when I mess around installing more drives.
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