Mac Pro Raid Card

[Peter Tours]

It really is a paradox that in trying to avoid a situation I encountered it all over again.

Pro Apps, Mac and “Enterprise”(home of the dreaded Raid Card) support are completely isolated from each other. Each knows frighteningly little about the others’ area of specialization. And no one I have encountered at Apple gets the “Pro” thing – that if a PRO buys a Mac PRO, a Macbook PRO and Final Cut PRO he needs integrated professional assistance while his business is going down in gray screen flames..but alas, no. To Apple, Pro is simply a marketing word to sell product. They are not prepared at all to deal with pro’s. Live and learn.

Peter Tours
TnT Video Services, Inc.
Fort Lauderdale, FL

[Bob Zelin]

Peter –
it is even more shocking to have the luxury of being able to “see” inside Apple occationally, and see the NON COMMUNICATION between divisions of Apple. You think you are buying an “Apple only” product, but the different divisions are clueless about the other products in the Apple product line. This is why many TV stations still rely on AVID for their newsrooms, even though the cost is insanely high compared to other products – THEY NEED THE PROFESSIONAL SUPPORT.
To this day, it really bothers me that when I needed Apple Enterprise support (at a TV station emergency) on an old Apple XSERVE RAID (when it was a current product), Apple did not know the answer (after 2 hours on the phone), but AJA DID know the answer (in 10 seconds). That was a big lesson for me that day.

As you know, I am a huge FCP supporter, and do almost 100% FCP systems with AJA and Blackmagic hardware. But I am very well aware that if AVID had simply lowered their price (when all of this FCP stuff started to happen), Apple would have never been able to enter our market. To this day, the # 1 reason people don’t want AVID is simply because it costs too much money.

Bob Zelin

[Peter Tours]

I think I just had an epiphany and figured out I may be causing a problem based on my overall configuration.

I was staring at Disk Utility a little while ago and it hit me…I use bay 1 for my system disc and bays 2-4 for my media – the raid card should only be controlling bays 2-4. But it naturally controls all 4 bays – ergo I am causing my own problems

I think I should move my system disc to an optical bay. What do you think??

Peter Tours
TnT Video Services, Inc.
Fort Lauderdale, FL

[William Mccauley]

Glad to see this thread… I was looking to rework my backup process and was thinking about the Apple Raid card. Sorry to see its not reliable. In my MacPro I have 4 drives 1st is sys/apps that is backed up to an external Time Machine. Drives 2 & 3 are configured in a Raid 1? for performance. The 4th drive is where I shuffle snapshots of ongoing projects and finished Media Manage projects for storage. Been doing this about a year. I just worry about my forgetfulness to back up at key times which often is just an FCP file since I pretty much have all my assets before I start, and the 1st backup covers assets. A perfect no-brainer solution for me would be to have the FCP AutoSave folder automatically copied to my 4th drive. Now I’m looking to add on the back end a firewire 800 dock-toaster interface to plug in bare drives for redundant backup of that 4th drive…then store copies both on and off site.

Project size is typically 10 to 15 gig. Then Media managed down to 6 to 10 gig.

[Peter Tours]

Bob – do you have an opinion on my configuration?

I think I just had an epiphany and figured out I may be causing a problem based on my overall configuration.

I was staring at Disk Utility a little while ago and it hit me…I use bay 1 for my system disc and bays 2-4 for my media – the raid card should only be controlling bays 2-4. But it naturally controls all 4 bays – that has got to be

I think I should move my system disc to an optical bay. What do you think??

Peter Tours
TnT Video Services, Inc.
Fort Lauderdale, FL

[Bob Zelin]

yes, if you let the RAID card control drives 2-4 (and leave your boot drive isolated), then you will have less issues.

with that said, I still don’t get why you need the Apple RAID card in the first place. You are doing RAID 0, which can be done with a bare bones no options MAC, right from the SATA controller on the MAC motherboard. If you knew nothing about the RAID card, you would get the cheapest MAC Pro you could, with one drive, stick in drives 2-4, and RAID 0 the drives 2-4 using Apple Disk Utility. The Apple RAID card does NOTHING for you if you are not doing a RAID 5 group. Other than cause your aggrivation.

bob

[Peter Tours]

Besides the fact that I own it, I don’t suppose I can come up with a great reason. But that said, doesn’t it enhance a raid set with additional memory or buffering (or something) that would justify keeping it in there?

Do you think there would be any difference between:

a. leaving things as they are now
b. pull the card and use DU to make a new raid 0 set of bays 2-4
c. leave everything as it is but move the system drive to an optical bay

Thanks

Peter Tours
TnT Video Services, Inc.
Fort Lauderdale, FL

[Bob Zelin]

if it were me, I would pull the card, after all the trouble you went thru. No one needs that card – certainly not for RAID 0.

Keep it simple.

Bob