RAID

The nature of my business requires use on UNIX about 99.99% of the time and in 2004 I have finally switched from having two IBMs running W2000 and one Linux box to a single box PowerMac G5 (1.6Ghz, 2,256Mb RAM etc. - do not laugh, upgraded later-on to 2,256 Gb RAM).

I am still running Panther 10.3.9 (yes, at the time of this posting) on it and have no plans on upgrading this particular machine to Tiger or anything newer. Mac OS X proved to be a bullet-proof OS and I am running on this particular machine Perl Daemon (24/7), do some light Photoshop work, edit movies in Final Cut Pro (Studio), keep database files for all my clients and God knows what else I am doing...


I do some traveling sometimes and having all my stuff unprotected got me worried a lot! Never mind I could always access this machine VIA SSH or HTTP to get information I need (and I often need something, mostly everyday) from far far away.

If this machine goes down or my network (cable modem hook-up) goes down - I am in trouble.

Network is pretty much controlled by the daemon and Phidgets servo controller. In case my daemon can not access the Internet - it shuts-down and powers back cable modem and all routers VIA Perl, AppleScript and Futaba servos that control power-strips. That was pretty much worked-out to the "T".


As for the actual data protection I have tried the SoftRAID for a month and was not happy with the thought that I have to rely on software that keeps mirror images of the data. Bootable SoftRAID just came-out and I just can not lean all my business on (even dependable) software.


I started looking for a hardware RAID solution available on the market for PowerMacs. Two weeks of search brought nothing except an option to switch to Xserve. The whole solution was easy about 5 grand, plus another month of adjusting all programs and work-out details etc. I just was not ready at the time to stop doing everything and dish-out $5,000.

I got a few ARAID-2000 by Accordance Systems Inc. links on Google and started reading. Price tag was around $350 plus SATA cables and a bit of time and skills to put the unit in my Mac.

From articles on the Internet I have learned that it is possible to completely take the unit apart and put it in my Mac since ARAID originally comes in 5 inch dual bay box with nice trays, fan etc.

PowerMac G5 does not have bays and all internal structure is greatly thought-out to be efficient and just very nice to look at! Being a pilot, I also understand how G5 is ventilated and did not want to disrupt the airflow inside the box too much. The solution I came-up with was to use some old PCI card as a holding base for the ARAID 2000 card that sits in the unit.

I have grinded-out all PCI contacts on old card to make sure I will not short anything in my Mac.

Used some old plastic piece for ARAID card support and got the whole contraption assembled inside.

Now I need to place the ARAID display nicely somewhere it could be easily monitored. Obvious place would be right under the DVD-ROM drive. Here comes the fun part to make a nice nifty hole in G5-s front panel while the motherboard and all stuff is still inside the Mac.

I took-out front fan/speaker assembly and used a towel (yes, regular towel) to prevent filed-down metal from coming in contact with anything inside. Before removing the towel I used my vacuum cleaner to suck-out as much metal as possible from the towel.

Hole in the front panel came-out very nice and I used a two-way tape to fix the ARAID display (which still holds since June of 2005).

The main issue while putting all parts back together for ARAID is to make sure you connect all wires the way they were.


The next step is to connect your hard drives. PowerMac G5 has two drive bays inside. Originally I had 80Gb Seagate in my Mac. I bought two identical SATA 160Gb Seagate Barracuda hard drives to use in my newly built RAID. Two funky male-male 12 inch SATA cables (although 18 inches would've worked better) were needed to connect ARAID to the hard drives.

Original Apple cable is used to connect ARAID to Mac SATA controller. Well, I had to make another hole in my Mac's airflow separator (it separates the drives compartment from the PCI cards compartment) to let the two red cables be inside the glass cover that controls the airflow.

When everything seems to fall-in-place nicely and no missing parts found - it's time to fire-up my Mac to finally see if the whole idea would work! Front ARAID switch is set for RAID-1 mirror and temperature warning switch is turned-off -- booting my Mac from Setup DVD to see weather it will accept ARAID or not!

Running Disc Utility and It shows new ARAID volume and doesn't know there are two drives on that volume. Restoring OS from backed-up image. IT WORKED!


After restoring the system (about 25 minutes) Mac booted-up as nothing had happened with new hardware RAID and even reports SMART status for the drives.

Time to test the RAID reliability! This is something that ARAID designers probably did not envision - I had to remove the drive harnesses one by one (one at the time) to see if OS will keep-on-going.

Test went great with master removed and then slave removed. For the sake of the experiment I had my drives removed from the drive bays and after removing them I actually erased them in Firewire enclosure hooked-up to my PowerBook - imitating drive replacement.

ARAID completely restored fresh drives in about two hours. The whole concept worked and for the total of about $590 (including two brand new hard drives) I do not have to worry too much about losing any data on my Mac.

Some things I forgot to mention:

- ARAID original box gets trashed

- Both nice ARAID drive trays gotta go too

- ARAID original cooling fan - goes

- You will not need ARAID CD with drivers - it's just works (like about 99% of things on Macs)

- ARAID controller board with drive harnesses and all cabling kept in order for RAID to work

- ARAID front display stays

Main thing: - if you follow this description of converting your drive to RAID on Mac or any other computer and it will not work - I am stating it right now: "IT MAY NOT WORK FOR YOU"!

Last Warning: I assume no responsibility for the outcome of your own RAID project. Play at your own risk! (please).