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24 Bay SAS Expander Single Drive Volumes Only Mounting 16 in OSX…
Hello,
I am a bit new to the whole mass storage so please forgive any lack of needed info… I have read a few post on this forum and there are many insightful people in this RAID area that hopefully can help.
I currently have a MacPro 1,1 with a Newer Technology MAXPower RAID mini-SAS 6G-1e1i. OSX Snow Leopard OS. At this stage I am NOT trying to raid anything. I have a 24 bay SAS expander box with an Areca “controller” that feeds the SAS cable to the 24 bays. This card supports up to 128 devices through SAS expanders. When I fill the expander with 24 drives only 16 mount. I was thinking that OSX SL was maxing out at 16 volumes but Apples spec sheets says unlimited volumes in OSX (all versions). Also the internal bays do not seem to have an affect on the 16 number. I can have one or two internal bays filled with varying partitions (I have tried 1-4 meaning a total of 17-20 mounted volumes are showing in OSX.
The webGUI is showing ALL 24 drives in the SAS Expander. OSX is only mounting 16. All the bays work as I can remove drives from the upper bays then the lower bays will mount. It seems the card is working, the GUI is working, but something between that and the OS is limiting to 16 drives.
I am in contact with OWC but it is slow going as they are mixing my support question with another customer with totally different hardware…sigh.
Maybe there is a limit to the number of automatic “pass through” devices? Would PCIe 2 slots make a difference (I am not interested in speed just total drives mounted, although they are already seen by the GUI now)? I am not at the office till later in the week to try other things but thought I would post incase I am missing something simple.
Any help appreciated!
John
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7 Replies
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you have a professional 24 bay chassis with an Areca SAS expander in it. You need an ATTO or Areca host adaptor card for this to work properly. That’s correct my friend, you will now spend about $1000 for the correct card to get this to work. And I have no idea how well this will work in your 2006 1,1 Mac Pro that will not run a 64 bit operating system.
Bob Zelin
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Hey Bob,
We had this card from another PC project (that it failed in) & can buy a better card and I have a MacPro 3,1 that I can throw it in for true 64-bit love. Really didn’t think it would be such a hassle to “mount some drives”… But of course why shouldn’t it be difficult… What if I went non-professional 24 bay SAS expander. Would my POS card work then 😉 …don’t need raid… just mountin’ some drives…
But seriously since I do not need raid…
ARC-1320-8X This should work for me right…? It’s not $1k and it supports SAS Expander up to 128 devices… or am I missing something…?
Thanks in advance!!
John• PCIe x8 lane 2.0 bus ( x8, x4, and x1 lane widths) • Up to 6Gb/s transfer rates per SAS port • Support 1.5, 3.0 and 6 Gb/s SAS and SATA link rates • Support a maximum 128 SAS/SATA devices using SAS expander • Available in a low-profile form factor • Low-profile bracket • BIOS PnP(plug and play) and BBS(BIOS boot specification) support • Legacy BIOS and EFI support • RoHS compliant
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Hi John –
it sounds like you already own a hi end professional 24 bay drive chassis with an Areca SAS expander in it. I can tell you that the 1882x card works perfectly. If you were an amateur or student, I would understand, and not give you a hard time about this. But it sound like you have money (or your company has money) because you own a very expensive 24 bay SAS chassis. So why not buy the right card ? Exactly what is the problem here ?Bob Zelin
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[John Straus] “ARC-1320-8X This should work for me right…?”
Yes and the fact that it’s not a RAID controller but an HBA is perfect for your goal of “just mounting some drives”. Have you tried contacting Areca support? I’d suspect either an OS or a driver limitation, or some sort of incompatibility between the HBA and the expander, or a misconfiguration where the HBA is unable to use the expander’s functionality and is contiguously mapping one device per lane. Possibly it’s something very simple.
Alex Gerulaitis
Systems Engineer
DV411 – Los Angeles, CA -
Hey Bob,
I guess the point is that everything adds up and I’m trying to avoid spending extra on hardware that I do not need, or better yet could be used toward other things that I really do need (I’m saying I but other people control the $$). Even though the expander boxes are pro level (glad they are) it’s a very small company with shallow pockets. If I was to do raid I would buy the card you suggested but seeing there are other less expensive options from Areca and will seemingly do what I need at this time that’s what I need to suggest to go with. I know it’s only like $450 more for that raid card but that will end up going toward another expander box.
I would prefer making some raid arrays and get off these single drives but that just isn’t going to happen this season. Even if it does happen at some point we can always use this card for other things. Thanks for your advise and time responding!
Alex, I havent contacted Areca support but will. That newertech card seems to work in some situations and fails in others so I don’t even know if I want to trouble shoot with it. I didn’t purchase these items and am just trying to make it work! Thanks for the response!
I will post back when I get it running properly so this topic has a real solution no matter what it might be!!
Thanks again,
John -
Hello John,
Yes, the ARC-1320-8x card would be perfect solution for Non-RAID configurations.
I’m a bit confused at which card you are using? Are you using the Newertech card or the Areca card? If you’re having trouble with the Areca ARC-1320-8x, then please contact our support team @714-961-0800 x112 so they can get this resolved for you.
Ricardo Reyes
Areca Technologies – US Channel
Ricardo@ArecaUS.com
http://www.Areca.com.tw***** RAID is not a substitute for proper and regular backups *****
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Hi Ricardo,
Sorry I didn’t see your reply before Alex’s! I have the Newertech MaxRAID which wasn’t working nicely with the Areca Expanders. It could just be the way that the Marvell chipset handles things? Anyway we got the 1320 and it works perfectly. Mounts everything past the 16 drive limit I was reaching with the Newertech, no muss, no fuss. Hotswaps easily unlike the Newertech which would require ejecting from the desktop as well as from the webGUI or the Areca controller would thing it lost a drive even though it was a “Passthrough” drive.
Thanks for the advice and help everyone! Areca 1320 works perfectly with the 24 bay expanders for a bunch of drives set up!
John
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