The first challenge is getting to the admin utility which runs as a web based system on the card itself, it’s really just a case of typing into safari which brings up the following page but even figuring that out means trawling through a very in depth manual.įrom there you can navigate into many pages of setup and maintenance options (See the bottom of this post for examples). With something like a Drobo or a Pegasus system there’s going to be a slick installer app that you can run and follow the on screen prompts and options until your unit is ready to roll, nothing like that here!. Once at the desktop I looked at the system profiler and the card was showing as an SAS device, so far so good! The next job was to set up a RAID set… that’s where things started to get a little more complicated.
Mac pro raid card install#
Areca had a press release on their website stating that drivers for their SAS cards were included with Mountain Lion so I shouldn’t need to install any drivers… fingers crossed! Interestingly the Mountain Lion drivers are not available on the included CD or on the Areca website at the time of writing this.
Mac pro raid card pro#
I had decided to install Mountain Lion on my Mac Pro previous to ordering the RAID kit and so made sure that the appropriate drivers for the card were available. The card has a speaker built on to it so that it can warn you about any problems that may crop up with the array. Once connected up I switched on the Enclosure followed by the Mac Pro.īooting the Mac Pro results in two loud beeps from the Areca card, this is normal for a cold boot. The enclosure is just a dumb device that holds and connects up the drives really, there’s no configuration necessary for the enclosure itself. Wiring up was very simple, just plug in the two SAS connectors, attach a power lead, and it’s ready to go. Mine came from Rentaraid pre-installed with eight Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 3TB Drives. When I unpacked the enclosure I was surprised how small it was, probably due to the image at the top of this post. I went for an Enhance-Tech E-800MS 8 bay desktop enclosure, the same product is marketed in the US as the Proavio Editbox 8. I numbered my cables and the Mac so that if I have to remove the cables at any point I could make sure to return them to the same position. The cables and connectors are large and very solid, they slide into the cards and fasten with a press button release mechanism. Next job is connecting a pair of miniSAS cables to the back of the card.
I’m not sure whay the newer models don’t have that feature but anyway, it makes things simpler.Īs you can see in the images above the card is locked into place by the bolt on locking place as well as a sliding bar which on the 2010 Mac Pro is locked and unlocked by pressing a small button on the fan assembly and sliding the assembly backwards and forwards. With older Mac Pro’s like the 2008 Model you can actually configure the slots in various ways using a utility that pops up when the Mac detects a PCI configuration change. The card would still work if connected to a x4 slot but performance would be effected to some degree. With my Nvidia Quadro 4000 GPU using the bottom slot the obvious choice for the new card was the next slot up. The slots in a 2010 Mac Pro are preconfigured so that the bottom two are x16 and the top two are x4.
One thing to take into consideration is that the SAS card is capable of utilising a x8 PCI slot. If you’ve grown up on iMacs then you might find this a little daunting but as long as your careful then fitting PCI cards is fairly straightforward. Fitting the card into the Mac Pro is a relatively simple process, at least it is if you’re used to fiddling around with PCI cards. This card features two external SAS connectors, each capable of controlling up to four SATA hard drives, hence the (8 port) description. The PCIe card is the Areca AC-1882x 8 port SAS/SATA Raid adapter.
Mac pro raid card update#
I recently posted about choosing a new storage solution for my Mac Pro where I decided to invest in an SAS based RAID system from Now that the kit has been installed I thought I’d post a quick update about the installation procedure, an issue I ran into and the results so far.įirstly, here’s a rundown of the kit I ordered and how it’s all setup.
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