Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Has anybody gotten a RocketRAID 640 working in a Mac Pro?

I have a RocketRAID 640 I purchased, based on the fact that it "had OS X drivers". Unfortunately l'm running into a bit of a snafu here.


The English website (www.highpoint-tech.com) shows for the RR640 drivers that "Mac drivers are available at http://hptmac.com/cn". This is their Chinese website of all places (why, if it has Mac drivers are they not listed on the English site?). I recently was contacted by their tech support, and they appear to be totally clueless why their driver isn't working.


Ya see, the one they link to is this one:


http://www.hptmac.com/US/productfiles/HPT-Quad-eSATA-mac-v100-100120.dmg


But it's on the Chinese website. Yay?


So here's the issue: The .kext file's info.plist shows an IOPCIPrimaryMatch entry of "6441103". Breaking that down, the 1103 is the Marvell 9128 SATA controller (there are two on the card, oddly at x1 link width). The 644 is the ID of the card the driver is looking for in order to load. In other words, the driver (RR64x.kext), from the installer packaged labeled "RR644M" (for RocketRAID 644 Mac), will only see the RR644, but not the RR640 which I have. Unfortunately, injecting the proper IOPCIPrimaryMatch entry into the .kext file renders the .kext useless as it becomes a file that has "been installed incorrectly and cannot be used", because a user (me) modified it.


Has anybody gotten this card to work in a Mac Pro in OS X (it works fine in Windows on a Mac Pro) other than the inability to use CTRL-H to activate its BIOS configuration utility at bootup)? And if so, what driver are you using?


I've lost three days worth of work/"fun time" to trying to figure this out. I don't know why the card is so hard to get working, since functionally it's identical to the 644, only instead of eSATA ports they're all internal. Even the controllers used are the same, as is the link width of the card itself (but apparently not the firmware?).


I knew HighPoint had ridiculously bad support, but their hardware in general is rock solid (once you get it up and running). I kind of want my Vertex 3s to finally run speedy. I'd really hate to have to get a 6Gbps SAS card instead (and it'd have to be bootable which is EXPENSIVE) in order to plug into my Mac Pro 1,1's SAS cable that it uses to control the four internal HD bays (though that would give the HD bays native 6Gbps speed!).

Mac Pro 2.66 GHz Dual Core Xeons (Mac Pro1,1), Mac OS X (10.6.8), Mac OS X Lion on secondary boot SSD

Posted on Aug 11, 2011 7:36 PM

Reply
Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Aug 13, 2011 8:49 AM

Highpoint RR Quad eSATA for Mac is sold on Apple Store

http://store.apple.com/us/product/H1113LL/A


with 4 favorable comments, from one that flashed the firmware for EFI32 to be bootable (odd, as they said they had "Early 2008" which does not jive), a few with 2010 models.



Sonnet, FirmTek or other with 6G PCIe controller IF it does not need to be bootable (you said you wanted that); and, you aren’t going to be pushing for really high performance with a single SSD.



If you want to stay with Highpoint (exchange?) HPT links to Apple product page -

RocketRAID Quad eSATA 6Gb/s for Mac $249

http://www.hptmac.com/US/product.php?_index=65



What I did find were these Highpoint downloads:

http://www.hptmac.com/US/product.php?_index=57&viewtype=download


Driver version 1.0 - which you already have

http://www.hptmac.com/US/productfiles/bios_driver/HPT-Quad-eSATA-mac-v100-100120 .dmg


There is an EFI zip file, maybe you need to flash yours.


Highpoint Mac support page: from 9/2009

http://www.hptmac.com/US/product.php?_index=57&viewtype=download


Lion compatible products page:

http://www.hptmac.com/US/categories.php?compatibility=18


Highpoint Lion Support Mac

http://www.hptmac.com/US/product.php?_index=57&viewtype=reviews



Amazon (USA) also sells the same card carried by Apple Store -

http://www.amazon.com/HighPoint-Quad-SATA-6Gb-Mac/dp/B003MXCZMI/


Barefeats 6G SSD (ATTO Express R644, RocketRAID 2721) support for 6G SSD

http://www.barefeats.com/ssd6g02.html


Barefeats older 3G RocketRAID

http://www.hptmac.com/PDF/RocketRAID_eSATA_For_Mac_Barefeats_Review.pdf

http://www.hptmac.com/US/product.php?_index=57&viewtype=reviews


----

And what I found about RR640 (I have 620s in my PC but the extra 40 seconds to the boot time and stability were a no-go for me)


The Highpoint RocketRAID 640 is a PC card (only).

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2011/01/04/high-point-rocketraid-640-review/1

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115077

http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_rr600.htm

Windows – Linux – FreeBSD driver support (only)



-----

Apple Community –

Has anybody gotten a RocketRAID 640 working in a Mac Pro?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3256839


3 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Aug 13, 2011 8:49 AM in response to Terra Branford

Highpoint RR Quad eSATA for Mac is sold on Apple Store

http://store.apple.com/us/product/H1113LL/A


with 4 favorable comments, from one that flashed the firmware for EFI32 to be bootable (odd, as they said they had "Early 2008" which does not jive), a few with 2010 models.



Sonnet, FirmTek or other with 6G PCIe controller IF it does not need to be bootable (you said you wanted that); and, you aren’t going to be pushing for really high performance with a single SSD.



If you want to stay with Highpoint (exchange?) HPT links to Apple product page -

RocketRAID Quad eSATA 6Gb/s for Mac $249

http://www.hptmac.com/US/product.php?_index=65



What I did find were these Highpoint downloads:

http://www.hptmac.com/US/product.php?_index=57&viewtype=download


Driver version 1.0 - which you already have

http://www.hptmac.com/US/productfiles/bios_driver/HPT-Quad-eSATA-mac-v100-100120 .dmg


There is an EFI zip file, maybe you need to flash yours.


Highpoint Mac support page: from 9/2009

http://www.hptmac.com/US/product.php?_index=57&viewtype=download


Lion compatible products page:

http://www.hptmac.com/US/categories.php?compatibility=18


Highpoint Lion Support Mac

http://www.hptmac.com/US/product.php?_index=57&viewtype=reviews



Amazon (USA) also sells the same card carried by Apple Store -

http://www.amazon.com/HighPoint-Quad-SATA-6Gb-Mac/dp/B003MXCZMI/


Barefeats 6G SSD (ATTO Express R644, RocketRAID 2721) support for 6G SSD

http://www.barefeats.com/ssd6g02.html


Barefeats older 3G RocketRAID

http://www.hptmac.com/PDF/RocketRAID_eSATA_For_Mac_Barefeats_Review.pdf

http://www.hptmac.com/US/product.php?_index=57&viewtype=reviews


----

And what I found about RR640 (I have 620s in my PC but the extra 40 seconds to the boot time and stability were a no-go for me)


The Highpoint RocketRAID 640 is a PC card (only).

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2011/01/04/high-point-rocketraid-640-review/1

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115077

http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_rr600.htm

Windows – Linux – FreeBSD driver support (only)



-----

Apple Community –

Has anybody gotten a RocketRAID 640 working in a Mac Pro?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3256839


Aug 13, 2011 6:18 PM in response to The hatter

The driver page you found wasn't the only driver page I found. I found this one:


http://www.highpoint-tech.cn/BIOS_Driver/page/rr640.htm


Which then links to this site:


http://www.hptmac.com.cn/


On which this page holds the listed Mac driver:


http://www.hptmac.com.cn/China/rr640c.htm


I was only able to find my way through the Chinese site (a [i]Mac[/i] oriented one AFAIK) via the mouseover links shown in the browser's status bar when you hover over a link. Those are thankfully in English.


The EFI driver is for the 3Gbps dual eSATA card previously released for the Mac. Maybe if I could get ahold of an EFI firmware for the 644 or if I'm really lucky they might have a 640 EFI firmware. And yes, this card, at least in Windows, adds a full two minutes to the startup time. And on a Mac Pro it doesn't respond to the CTRL-H BIOS configuration utility.


I have decided that I do want bootability after all if possible, but it isn't a dealbreaker. I can always boot from the internal SAS connection (the 1,1 Mac Pro indeed uses an SAS/SFF-8087 connector for its four backplanes) and RAID some SSDs in the optical bay.


The reason I originally went with the 640 was twofold:


1) It has four internal SATA ports.I could use them in a dual mode configuration when necessary (2x internal, one drive on each of the Marvell controllers, 1x eSATA via a $3 eSATA bracket from monoprice.com for a spare external backup system that doesn't always have to be on).


2) Digging around showed (via the links above) that there were Mac drivers available for the card even though it was shown as PC/Linux only on the websites. I made the mistake of trusting HighPoint's own website against what every other website showed.


I'm really hoping there is an EFI firmware for this card, or at least a BIOS that lets the drivers see the card properly in OS X. It'd be pretty damned sad if HighPoint had an internal 4 port version of their Quad eSATA card for the Mac, but it wasn't OS X compatible purely because of a few missing ID entries.

Has anybody gotten a RocketRAID 640 working in a Mac Pro?

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.