Seagate 1.5 TB drives in a Mac Pro

[Bob Gruen]

As an FYI:

I've installed 4 Seagate 1.5 TB drives in my Mac Pro in a RAID 5 configuration (Apple RAID card). This yields 3.57 TB when formatted, which I carved into a 200GB system drive and a 3.37 TB storage disk. The Mac recognizes the disks just fine and the disks perform well. (Due to density and 4 platters they are almost as fast as VelocitiRaptors, if you believe the stats).

Also, for those thinking about the Apple RAID card I'd advise against it. The system does not like being off for any length of time. I shut it down and unplugged it for Christmas vacation and when I powered it back up a week later I was met by a bunch of RAID warnings and a reinitialize on the array itself (which takes ~24 hours). Everything is working fine and I didn't loose anything, but IMHO an $800 4 port RAID card should be bulletproof, instead it makes me nervous.

Bob

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Just want to agree with Bob here.

I have 3 x Seagate 1.5TB drives in a Mac Pro. They are in a RAID-5 and perform just as well in this configuration with just about the same capacity as the 3 x Hitachi 1TB in RAID-0 that they replaced. Just be sure the 1.5TB drives have the latest firmware installed. This system is running 1 x 1TB HDD as the boot/applications drive and the 3x 1.5TB drives as a workspace volume via the CalDigit RAID card. I can fully utilize Bootcamp on this system, unlike a system configured with the Apple RAID card. Actually, there are ways to do BootCamp with the Apple RAID card installed, but that's another story and nothing good there...

But more than that, I wanted to second Bob's sentiments on the Apple RAID card. IT IS A COMPLETE PIECE OF SHIT! I still have one Mac Pro system that I intend to replace with the CalDigit card, but I just haven't done it yet. I guess it will just have to bite me in the ass one more time before I do it.

In addition to what Bob said above, the Apple RAID card likes to periodically recondition the cache battery. The problem is that it provides no way for the user to schedule or override this activity. It just does it whenever it feels like doing it, about every 60 to 90 days. I had it do this to me for the first time right in the middle of a huge project and it almost caused me to miss a major deadline.

I've ranted about the Apple RAID card in other threads. It completely sucks. There is nothing good about it. That said, I have one for sale if anyone wants it. I'll sell it cheap.

 

[nomadix rob]

Interesting you should say that about the Apple Raid card. I am on the verge of putting in quote for a Mac Pro system that can be used to edit, which included the Apple Raid Card and 3TB of space. What would you advise as a better card to go for?

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Interesting you should say that about the Apple Raid card. I am on the verge of putting in quote for a Mac Pro system that can be used to edit, which included the Apple Raid Card and 3TB of space. What would you advise as a better card to go for?

http://www.CalDigit.com/RAIDCard/


More specifically, about the Apple card, the cache battery issue also gives no pre-warning about when the conditioning cycle will happen. It's not always a completely set amount of time. Or perhaps it is, but I think it is affected or dictated by the amount of up and/or down time of the system. During the conditioning cycle, the controller cache is disabled and performance is abysmally slow, some people report that they have encountered data corruption or failure of RAID volumes too during the conditioning period if they attempt heavy usage.

There are other cards out there that may be better depending on your actual needs. However, if the Apple RAID card offered what you wanted, and you plan to use with SATA drives and not SAS, then the CalDigit card is the way to go. Not to mention it offers a ton of eSATA connectivity, the Apple card has no external connectivity. The CalDigit card offers support for BootCamp and has drivers for Windows and Linux. The Apple card only works in OSX and even that is debatable when it can pull up lame when you least expect it and will have no control over it.

The CalDigit card with optional BootCamp pass-through cable and optional cache battery backup module, is still cheaper than the Apple card.

 

[nomadix rob]

Checked out the caldigit drive and it definately seems like more the way to go. I have not been able to find an Australian price online, but from what ive seen, even with the exchange rate it looks like its way cheaper then the Apple Card too! Thanks for the tip

 

[Bob Gruen]

The only drawback to the CalDigit is how expensive the external disk modules are. I think it's a case of giving the initial product away and making their big margins on the add-ons.

That being said I'll probably end up going that way myself...

Bob

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

The CalDigit RAID card works with any eSATA drive system. You don't have to just use theirs. The external ports are multi-channel eSATA over mini-SAS, which is becoming quite common with RAID cards. So you use a mini-SAS to eSATA fan cable to attach multiple eSATA devices to a single mini-SAS port. There are also other eSATA drive enclosures and RAID systems on the market that have mini-SAS ports externally to save on cable bulk.

Here's an eSATA fan-out cable. Other manufacturers make them too. I bought one from newegg, but they don't seem to have any in their store at the moment. Mine is an i.Star brand, but same thing.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Highpoint Technologies/MS1MES/

EDIT> Hmmm... I just noticed that CalDigit is no longer promoting eSATA connectivity for the card, but rather are saying that their HD Element RAID is the exclusive external solution for their RAID card. ....Curious.

 

[michael zaletel]

Apple Pro RAID card is fine. Yeah it gives some warnings when you leave the computer off and restart after a few days but I just ignore those warnings as they have never caused any problems and do not seem to even affect anything. Also, it's good to have full Apple Care Warranty on your entire system. That's why I also pay extra for Apple Ram. Any problems at all and you can just take it to an Apple Store for immediate resolution. If you use a third party Raid card, third party ram and etc. they tend to blame your problem on the third party components they don't support.

I've said this in other threads but I'll say it again here, if you are buying a high-end Mac Pro, sign up as an Apple Developer for a mere $500 per year and get a massive discount on one single system per year. I saved $2,000 on my last Mac Pro this way.

-shooter

 

[Steve Johnson]

Shooter -

Are Apple still doing the developer discount if you join straight away? I thought they had put a cavet on that you couldn't buy for the first year and get a huge discount?

If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong.

If true, then I'll be heading over there after MacWorld to order!!

Steve

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Shooter, you obviously have not had the battery reconditioning cycle happen to you yet. Or it has happened while you were away from the system for 12+ hours. Yes, it takes it over 10 hours to charge the battery! Aside from the warnings, you will notice it affects performance. Without the cache enabled, it can take over an hour to copy a 2GB R3D file! No way around it. When the system decides to do this, any volumes attached to the Apple RAID card are out of commission for any real world tasks for the duration of the battery reconditioning cycle. If Apple would just update their software so that the user could schedule the reconditioning to occur whenever they want and give a warning a day ahead as a reminder, allow the user to reschedule if necessary.. You know, make it work like most any decent RAID system on the market. That would make the Apple RAID card go from crap to being pretty decent. Oh, it would also be nice if they actually allowed their RAID card to support bootcamp and gave us Windows drivers for it.

Never had any goon at an Apple Store give me crap about third-party RAM or drives, etc.. Then again, I've never taken a system in to an Apple Store for service, so I guess I can't comment. Anyway, I've been buying RAM and drives elsewhere (the same ones Apple uses, typically) and it's never been an issue. Even before the days of the Apple stores. If I ever encountered someone giving me crap about it, I'd bust their chops, since Apple's own warranty policy specifically states that end users can freely install peripheral cards, memory and internal hard drives / storage from third-party vendors, without compromising the Apple Care warranty. Most third parties give better warranties than Apple on their RAM anyway. And RAM is easy to test.

Your point about the Developer Program is one I also recommend people look into. The one caveat is that your system and included software is to only be used for software development purposes, per the license agreement. This can be an issue for some operations if they work closely with various software or hardware vendors or even Apple. Just sayin'...

 

[Dustin Cross]

I have been using the RocketRaid cards for years with great success. Right now I have a RocketRaid 2322 card connected to a EnhanceBox E8 via two mini-SAS cables with 8 Seagate 1.5TB drives in a RAID 5 config.

The system is awesome. Insanely fast. AJA System test shows 508MB/s write and 569MB/s read and that is 80% full.

I have been using RocketRaid cards for several years. The new 43xx series cards seem to be even better.


Mahalo,
Dusty

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Yeah, the HighPoint cards are good too. So are the Atto cards. However, most RAID cards are not bootable under OSX, just be aware of that. It usually forces you to keep your system/boot drive connected to the primary SATA header instead of connecting to the RAID card.

I'm not trying to sound like a CalDigit commercial, but I think they have the only RAID card that is bootable for bootcamp.