How do I determine what needs attention on my Apple RAID card?

Question

Level 1

24 points

How do I determine what needs attention on my Apple RAID card?

Every time I turn on the computer, I get a message that says," The Apple RAID Card installed in your system requires your attention."

This is what I have: RAID 065-7214 Mac Pro RAID Card

Why do I keep getting this message? I am not sure what needs to be done to rectify any error. If there is no error and the warning is just due to battery charging, then I would like the warning to stop appearing--or do I just have to continuously click "Ignore"? Any insight into this?

When I open RAID Utility it says: RAID set R0-1 has been mounted with indeterminate data loss. ( Is this just due to improper shutdown?)
Also: Controller reports RAID system 72-hour battery reserve unavailable-System is configured to run without battery.

Message was edited by: Darlyne

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.4)

Posted on Aug 10, 2008 8:48 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

tlipfert

Level 1

10 points

Aug 24, 2008 2:03 PM in response to anmlprht

I have had the exact same error message. When you open Raid Utility (that is where you can read what "attention" is needed you will see under the "Status" section what happened, and under the "Tasks" you will see the raid card "initializing" your RAID set. The first time I saw this I freaked, thinking that my drives were being reformatted, and my data would be lost. This is not the case. If you look down on the left side, you will (hopefully) see green lights next to your drives. The initialization seems to be a verification of the raid structure -- basically checking to make sure everything is redundant.

So, back to the original question: it seems from my poking around that you SHOULD NEVER TURN OFF your Mac Pro with an Apple Raid Card installed. The firmware is not able to spin down the drives correctly, so when you turn your machine back on, you get the error message we have been discussing.

I would recommend you get a good battery backup (UPS, like an APC) and just power off your monitor when not using your machine. I did not see this in the documentation, I am not 100% sure, but this is what I will be doing. In my case it takes many hours for the Raid Util to initialize my Raid again.

Hope this helps.

Theo

Reply

Answer 2

anmlprht Author

Level 1

24 points

Oct 13, 2008 12:29 AM in response to tlipfert

... you SHOULD NEVER TURN OFF your Mac Pro with an Apple Raid Card installed.

I never remove my Raid Card. Are you suggesting not to turn off the machine? I thought that the warning came on when the battery was recharging. I think it is ok. I just eliminate the red error light when it comes on which is not often. Thank you for the response.

Reply

Answer 3

forstle

Level 1

25 points

Dec 1, 2008 6:12 PM in response to anmlprht

Every three months or so your RAID card will do a Battery cycle. I think it discharges the Battery fully and that's why the battery reserve is not available. My RAID card has done it three times since I got it and luckily I haven't noticed any slowness. However, my machine is doing an initialization itself right now and it's making using it unbearable. I don't know what caused it... It seems to have coincided with me deleting a partition using Disk Utility though. Not sure.

Reply