Mac Pro RAID Card

• Do not buy this product.

  1.0 out of 5 stars

  To start, I've worked with RAID adapters for 10+ years, so I've been around the block with them for quite some time.
  
  This card in a day-to-day situation will work fine. However, should you suffer a disk failure, it will corrupt your data when it starts to rebuild the array. I've had this happen twice now and the card is coming out of my machine.
  
  This card is very slow at building an array. +24 hours for a 4 disk array with a usable capacity of 3.57TB. This is very frustrating if you're in a hurry to get the machine up. Most other controllers I've worked with (well, all, actually) are ready for you to start using the volume almost immediately. Not this baby.
  
  Another issue is that there seems to be a disconnect in apple support with regards to an "enterprise" product being in a consumer product. Beware.
  
  Stay away from this if you value your data and sanity. … More (Read full review)

  • Written by Tom F from Charlotte
  • Oct 16, 2009

  192 of 207 people found this useful

  Was this useful? Do not buy this product.

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• Fast? Reliable?

  1.0 out of 5 stars

  Be prepared to spend a lot of time waiting with no real idea of what's happening if you purchase this finicky card. In the the few weeks since I purchased this card to install in my new 8-core Mac Pro, I've had my machine crash, killing the raid volume. Since getting my computer back from the Apple store (supposedly the card didn't like the drives I'd bought--I bought new ones), I've made several attempts to restore my data from the backup of the pre-crash drive. This wouldn't be so bad if any of the configuration tasks were fast; however, everything having to do with configuring this card takes forever. It takes eight hours to initialize a four 1TB RAID 5 array. Restoring data takes even longer, and I've had that process fail three times. The Apple RAID Utility only provides minimal feedback during these extremely lengthy operations, so you have no idea if anything is happening or if the application is hung. As I write this, I'm trying to delete the existing RAID volume, which is in an uncertain state. This task has been running for an hour so far, and it will probably take six hours to complete. If you are starting from scratch or have just a small amount of data to migrate, this card will probably work fine. (Performance was pretty sweet when it was working.) Otherwise, beware. … More (Read full review)

  • Written by Cleland E from Houston
  • Aug 21, 2009

  140 of 152 people found this useful

  Was this useful? Fast? Reliable?

  Yes No

• Not worth it for HD video edit workstation

  1.0 out of 5 stars

  We edit HD video/audio using FCP and Adobe Premiere on Mac Pro configured with 4 drives. Bay 1 Applications only; Bay 2 Exports/co mpressions & media share folder; Bay 3 & 4 are RAID 0. We have learned over the years that this configuration/setup and careful workflow is most efficient for video editing. The Apple RAID card has causes major delays over time with the "battery reconditioning", intermittent "loss of RAID set RSx", and "write cache disabled due to...". The Mac OS X Disk Utility is capable of RAIDing two drives, which is all that is needed on an edit workstation. According to an Apple Tech that I spoke with when we were having our initial problems, the Apple RAID card prefers to be left on 24/7 as if it were in a server... - NOT very Green, Apple- or network security safe. The RAID Utility software has, on a few occasions, disabled our Bay 2 drive when tests with Disk Utility and Drive Genius found the drive to be fully functional. Alas, more wasted time. Not a good purchase.. … More (Read full review)

  • Written by Bertrand O from Ithaca
  • Apr 22, 2011

  78 of 81 people found this useful

  Was this useful? Not worth it for HD video edit workstation

  Yes No

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• not worth the money

  1.0 out of 5 stars

  This RAID Card is always in some state of emergency, always drops the spare drive on a RAID 5, the battery always looses power. I would say maybe I have a dud if I only had one, but I have 2 Servers with these RAID Cards, and both suffer from the same problems...
  Also have a Sonnetech RAID card that we purchased for one tenth the cost, and it's far more reliable then these Apple RAID Cards. … More (Read full review)

  • Written by Donald D from Montreal
  • Nov 13, 2012

  11 of 11 people found this useful

  Was this useful? not worth the money

  Yes No

• Flaky and unpredictable

  2.0 out of 5 stars

  I installed a stack of 10 Xserves with these cards in them in 2008 in a higher ed setting. I kept all software and firmware up to date. I had no catastrophic failures; on the other hand, they kept me busy, and there was considerable irritation. For example, no warning that the batteries of the RAID cards would need replacing every 6 to 12 months and would give undecipherable error messages when starting to run down. Very little reference material on creation and management of RAID sets, aside from the GUI RAID utility, which is not self-explanatory. Documentation was skimpy and written at a simplistic level, with no reference for the command line utilities, error messages, etc. until several years after the card was marketed. I would avoid the Apple RAID card for critical enterprise uses. If used, be disciplined about backups and be prepared to change the battery annually. … More (Read full review)

  • Written by Laurie L from Skillman
  • Jul 11, 2012

  20 of 22 people found this useful

  Was this useful? Flaky and unpredictable

  Yes No

• When properly installed, works like a charm

  5.0 out of 5 stars

  When properly installed, works like a charm

  • Written by Don M from Coppell
  • Jun 28, 2012

  16 of 30 people found this useful

  Was this useful? When properly installed, works like a charm

  Yes No

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