8-Core / Apple Raid Card / Leopard Install 12/26/2007
My Apple Raid Card arrived via FedEx today and I am glad because I really want to migrate my stuff off my MacMini and start using my MacPro as my primary machine. I open the box which was 8-times as large as it really needed to be in order to get the darn to thing to me safely, but hey, for a little over $900 bucks, I am not going to knock it. Now this is where the fun begins... around 5:00PM.
5:00PM - Doing what any normal person would do, I start by unpacking the box and examining the card to see what it looks like, etc. At first I was mainly interested in how they were going to get all the drives to plug into the raid card, but after looking at the first few pictures in the step-by-step I knew it wasn't going to be fun. I mean, sure.. pictures of you having to take your drives out makes sense as I may have though that you had to plug the drives directly into the new card... but then when other things start having to be removed: the fan assembly, the port for the first hard drive (it was trapping the iPass cable you needed to move toward the raid card. I have to admit though, the instructions-- outside of untangling the iPass cable and fishing it over to the correct position-- were pretty decent. I was able to get the card installed in right around 30 minutes. The hardest part of the reassembly of the parts was the 2nd screw (not the one that goes into the motherboard) that holds the fan assembly down. If you don't have an 8-Core MacPro, I don't the second screw applies to you.
5:30PM - After getting everything hooked back up, I whipped out my Leopard disc and booted it up from CD. Things were going well, no errors and I get to the point where I can run RAID Utility from the menu options that appear. Not knowing what I am really doing, but at the same time knowing I got the card because I wanted RAID-5, I quickly create a RAID Set out of my 4 500GB drives. Once that was done, I tried to restart and install Leopard. I was sadly mistaken and ended up back in RAID Utility to create a Volume! Thinking that I found the missing part of the problem, I restarted again and started the Leopard install on the new Volumne. At this point I left the office and went to dinner.
7:00PM - Returning from dinner I am shocked to find that Leopard is telling me that it will only be a short 22 Hours and 46 Minutes for my installation to complete. My immediate reaction to this is to pick up my iPhone and call Apple Support. In about 5 minutes I am talking to someone. He gets all my information and I explain to him what I am trying to do and he says he will get a Pro on the line in about 15 minutes. Sounded great to me, so I waited.
7:16PM - Original tech comes back on line and states that it's taking longer than he thought to get a Pro for me. I noted to him that the install timer now said 22 hours and 38 minutes. Taking this as a good sign, I agree to hold for a longer period of time to get a Pro. The tech says he is going to look at the Apple discussion groups for an answer.
7:31PM - 21 Hours and 38 Minutes - Even Better! Still no Pro.
7:46PM - 21 Hours and 29 Minutes - I guess that's progress. Tech comes back online and says that he can't hang online with me because he has to take other calls and asks me if it's ok to be dumped into the Pro Queue. I figure what harm could come of that, either way I am waiting for a Pro. So I agree and the tech is now off the hook for helping me.
8:22PM - After about 30 minutes of reading macrumors.com and the Apple discuission groups, I find a nice thread that was started by someone named Transeau. The article basically outlined his and about 2 other people experiences with installing and using the Apple Raid Card. The bottom line of all this and what everyone needs to know as a part of the Apple Raid Card documentation (that comes with it!! not being referred to apple.com!) is that:
The battery does not come charged and can take anywhere from 10 to 53 hours (or more) to charge fully. If the battery is not charge, the cache will not be active and you will want to throw your new RAID card into a wall. You have to wait for your Volume to Initialize before using it. This takes anywhere from 2 hours for 4x160GB drives to 13 hours for 4x750GB drives. Of course the speed of your drives will effect the overall time as well. Mine is on target to take about 6 hours for 4x500GB drives.
9:00PM - A Pro picks up the phone! Holy Smokes! He asks me if I need with with Aperture, Final Cut or any other Pro software package. I say, "Uhhh.... Leopard?". He replies with, "What program you using?" Of course, I reply with "Raid Utility". Heh. So he admits that he is not a hardware guy. I inform him that I pretty much found my answer and was really waiting around to bounce my findings off the Pro before throwing away a 2 hour Apple Support call. He takes my information, puts me on hold and comes back about 10 minutes later and says, "Yep, I just spoke to another Pro and he agreed that there should be documenation with regards to the battery and typical installation (initialization) times.".
9:58PM - So I am just finishing typing this up. My initialization isn't done yet but I can see that the bar is moving at a rate of a little over an inch an hour on the screen and there are 2 inches left! I will stay up and try installing Leopard again tonight as I really need it to be my primary machine! I am sure I will write more tomorrow about how all that goes.
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