Cant access RAID1 drives with new High Sierra install

[jasjeet]

I built an old hack many years ago using Mountain Lion I think. That install got borked, so i have installed High Sierra.
Gigabyte Z68X UD3H is the motherboard.
I had 2 WD HDDs in RAID 1 setup through OSX. These are slave drives, not the boot drive.

I cant seem to get OSX to see this RAID setup now, i am not sure where to start. I added the SATA-RAID-unsupported.kext into the Clover boot folder under Other folder. But didnt make a difference, i dont see the kext load to be honest when i list the loaded kexts in Terminal.

Raid Utility wont launch, not sure if it should. It says its not supported.

Any pointers to get High Sierra to recognise the RAID 1 array? Right now i cant even access the drives

 

[jasjeet]

Bump. The previous install was Yosemite. Maybe getting that version will auto detect the RAID?

 

[jasjeet]

I went back to Yosemite and it can see the software RAID. I guess at some point the software raid between OS versions becomes incompatible.

 

[jaymonkey]

I went back to Yosemite and it can see the software RAID. I guess at some point the software raid between OS versions becomes incompatible.

@jasjeet,

It should'd do, I have a system running a RAID 1 (mirror) array, that system was set up on MacOS Mavericks many years ago and has been updated to every version of MacOS up to Mojave without any issues.

The most probable cause is not the drives themselves but the driver (kext) for the disk controller.

You motherboard has a Marvell 88SE9172 disk controller in addition to the SATA ports suppled by the Intel chipset. If your RAID disk's are connected to that then you will need to install a 3rd party SATA kext/driver.

Apple are notorious for dropping 3rd party disk controllers in each new version of MacOS, its quite possible that OSX Yosemite has native drivers for your Marvell disk controller where as High Sierra does not.

I've attached a kext driver below which provides support for your Marvell 88SE9172 disk controller.

Cheers
Jay

 

[jasjeet]

Thanks for the info. I was not seeing anything that related to my theory on the web so good to get a firmer answer than what i had. As far as i know, and knowing that there were issues with the 3rd party SATA ports back when i built it, i would think i would have connected the RAID to the Intel SATA ports (and the machine hasnt been touched since), but ill double check.

I already wiped and installed Yosemite, fairly easy nowadays, so until i need a newer OS version itll be staying like this till it next breaks. Thanks again.