Third Party RAID Card... Can it work?

[golding2]

I just bought a third party RAID card from Accusys (ACS-61000-4).

I heard about this card from Accusys at MacWorld last week and they assured me that the card would work in my Mac Pro. I tried installing it tonight (boy was THAT fun) and the "iPass" cable is not long enough to reach the RAID card. Apple's RAID card is much longer and is closer to the first hard drive bay, thus the iPass cable can be disconnected from the motherboard and connected to the RAID card. The card I just bought doesn't even make it to the middle of the machine and so the iPass cable isn't even close to making it to the Accusys card. I looked at many of the other RAID cards out there and they all seem to be of the "smaller form" like mine.

How can I extend the iPass cable so that it can be connected to my new RAID card? Has anyone else successfully installed a third-party card into their Mac Pro?

Thanks guys!

 

[Killerbob]

Did anyone ever come up with a solution for this???

 

[golding2]

I talked with Accusys and they said that you can actually switch the bay 1 and bay 2 hard drive connectors which will give you enough space to extend the original iPass cable. They did say that you can't just connect the RAID card into the MacPro and have it work for you. You need to do this intense workaround to get the correct drivers in your system/RAID card/Hard drives. I'll go ahead and paste their response below.

----------------------------------

Since Apple has not yet been able to place our device driver into their Mac
OS, there are a few tricks you will need to know before installing the Mac
OS onto our RAID.
Please follow these steps to enable our bootable feature.

Things you will need:
1. Intel Mac Pro
2. A host OS disk drive that came with the Intel Mac Pro.
3. Accusys 61000 4 bay controller.
4. One to 4 Mini SAS cable which came with the Accusys 61000 packaging.
5. At least one and up to 4 disk drives depends on the RAID level you would
use.
6. A power supply or any PC that can power up the hard drives. During the
installation, you will need to power up the hard drive/s from that power
supply or PC.

Installation procedure:
1. Plug 61000 controller into the Mac Pro. Use our mini SAS cable to connect
the disk drives you would like your OS to be installed to the controller. Do
not reroute the iPath yet.
2. Use local host drive and boot up the system. The system should detect
61000.controoler.
3. Install the Mac OS driver and the GUI. Then update the SystemCode,
Bootcode, EFI/, Mac OS Drivers to the latest version. Please make sure that
you install the EFI and the latest Mac OS driver!! Restart the Mac Pro.
<http://www.accusys.com.tw/eng/support_download.asp#expe>
4. Open up our RAIDGuard X Gui and you should be able to see the drives that
are attached to the controller. Use the create RAID function to create the
array volume.
5. Once the array volume got reported from OS, you can then use the Disk
Utility function to restore/clone the Mac OS from the local drive onto this
RAID array. Wait until it finishes, then shut down the Mac pro.
6. Remove the Local Host drive and replaced it with the Array drives that
were attached to 61000 controller through mini SAS cable. Re-route the iPath
and connect it to our controller (you might need to re-arrange disk slot 1
and 2 to make the cable long enough to reach our card). Then power up Mac
Pro and the system should start to load Mac OS from Array.

 

[Killerbob]

No, I mean the cabling issue?

 

[JesterJJZ]

No, I mean the cabling issue?

Yeah, you reroute the cables for drive bay one and two to give you some more slack.

 

[Haskellf]

Reroute works!!!

Rerouting the cables for drive bay one and two to give you some more slack, works well. Just be careful when unscrewing the screws... they can easily fall into your computer (I did this twice!).

BTW- This is cheaper than buying a cable but if you wish to extend the ipass cable, then here is a link to a product that does this. I haven't tried it though:

http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=category.display&category_id=332