Areca RAID SATA cards

[dontblink]

Hi all,

I'm wondering if anyone has any issues using Areca cards with Mavericks? I tried installing it and while the new driver (ArcMSR.kext V 1.3.7) recognized my RAID array, it ended up completely obliterating it when trying to mount it through Disk Utility (luckily I had a backup).

When I moved to Mountain Lion, I had to roll back the driver to version 1.3.4 and Mountain Lion worked great. However I cannot use that same driver in Mavericks in /Library/Extensions.

Anyone have any luck?

 

[haem]

Hi,

i think i tried all combinations with firmware and drivers with my areca arc 1220 (8x500gb, raid0) and mavericks, but no luck
the volumeset and raidset will die after starting up mavericks ... what i did:

o) create raid set and volume in raid bios utility -> fine
o) initializing raid set -> fine
o) boot to ubuntu 12.+ -> fine
o) boot to windows -> fine
o) boot to Mavericks -> system hangs after ~ 5 minutes, after restart raid set degraded, some disks failed

console says disk i/o error and something like "Areca Kernel could not complete background task successfully"

i even tried to export all disks as singles, but after starting disk utility same console errors and soon to be hung up.

FACT is that i got similar problems since lion BUT i could always resolve things using firmware 1.47 and driver 1.3.4 (latest 64bit version) ... but not this time!

any help ?

 

[x3pig]

I am having the same issue. For now I gave up on Mavericks on my Hac. My scenario:

* Currently running 10.8.4 using Thireus' modified setup (Chameleon + Preboot.dmg). Runs smoothly, no issues other than sleep not working very well (I don't care)
* Upgraded to 10.9 using the similar approach but with modified kext's in the Preboot.dmg (new AppleIntelPowerManagement.kext and a couple of others + updated Chameleon). The upgrade went fine and the system booted OK afterwards.
* 3 issues I have not managed to resolve with the Mavericks installation:
- Intel E1000e network driver would not work for some reason (ASUS Sabertooth P67 built in adapter) - nothing I could do would bring the adapter up
- The newly installed ArcMSR 1.3.7 driver detected the card and the volume - but partitions would stay grayed out. Was getting the "Areca Kernel could not complete background task successfully" errors. At some point I have deleted the ArcMSR.kext and after reboot my volume came corrupted with one drive missing. Following the rescue procedure from http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1303102 has restored the volume. However, I have never managed to mount the partitions in Mavericks
- Even when I brought up network access using a different adapter I would get an unknown error from App Store when trying to log in making it impossible to validate the various Apps I have purchased before the upgrade

So far: Mavericks 1 : Me 0

 

[lucatze]

Same here.

My RAID degraded after a couple of minutes running Mavericks. Also Mavericks had serious problems like Finder crashes or not showing up. After taking the RAID Controller out of the system, everything is running smoothly.

Did you try different SMBIOS versions? Areca says, the driver should be compatible to 10.9, so maybe it is just a problem of the SMBIOS.

I'm running 12.2 iMAC. In 10.8.4 everything is working just perfectly.

 

[haem]

my areca-horror started with Lion. I had never changed the SMBIOS. btw i dumped the areca controller and switched to apple software raid. write & read speed is almost the same.

I never had problems using 3ware 9650 cards but they are f*cking expensive, so I'm gonna stay with apple software raid.

 

[lucatze]

as i am using 8 x 2,5" drives, the software raid is not a option for me. It is interesting, that you mention problems with lion. i had them too, but tried to experiment with hardware components than the driver. after changing the power supply, sata cables and the cages, everything worked smoothly again. maybe i updated the driver at the same time and that was the real reason for the problems to stop.

Anyway, i will try to update the controller to EFI Bios. Maybe this will solve it. If not, i will change the controller.

 

[haem]

i also tried the EFI Bios, some error

i got 6 x sata 2 ports on my mainboard so I only "lost" 2 hdds.

 

[lucatze]

hey haem,

how stable is the software raid in your configuration ? RAID5 ? Did you test the raids stability when losing power?

maybe a software raid would be a good option for me as well.

looking forward to an answer

thanks,
luca

 

[haem]

hey haem,

how stable is the software raid in your configuration ? RAID5 ? Did you test the raids stability when losing power?

maybe a software raid would be a good option for me as well.

looking forward to an answer

thanks,
luca

Sorry for the late reply, I had (apple) raid0 running for years without a problem