So one of my clients wanted to get a relatively solid disk to disk backup system going for a production file share running on an Xserve G5 with OS X 10.3.9.
I recommended several raid products, amongst which were LaCie’s new Biggest S2S Raid Array, Apple’s X Serve Raid, and a couple consumer external FW drive models I like.
They chose the LaCie Biggest S2S. Its a pretty fair price for a 5 drive external raid array. It has a small foot print, and 1TB of storage in the Raid 1+0 configuration with a hotspare. I wish it supported Raid V though.. I’d like to squeeze a tiny bit more storage out of it and still get to keep the hot spare.
I expected this thing to be a walk in the park to setup. I waited until most of the office was out in the evening let everyone know the file server was going down. I popped in the SATA card. I expected to install the drivers and go…
Put in the Driver CD for the card, goto install the driver. Woohoo installation failure. So I went LaCie’s site to download a more current driver. Only one available for the provided SATA card v2.0.1 on the Mac. Download it. Installation Failure.
fix permissions
Installation succeeds…
Load up LaCie’s raid array manager and no dice. She doesn’t detect the raid array. Tinker for a little while.
Next maintenance window…
Swallow pride. Call tech support. Nice enough reps. I explain the problem. The status lights on the box say happy, manager software runs fine. I see the individual drives in disk utility… but no raid. We decide its the sata card, raid processor or server… (we’ve really narrowed this one down, eh?).
I tell the rep I’m going to test on another server, then send it in for exchange…
Next maintenance window…
Get to office. Make fresh install of 10.3 on older unused G4 work station. Install Sata Card. Install drivers, not! Call tech support. Send tech support install.log that plainly shows their packaging is fubar.ed(see attachment)… They can’t reproduce(on 10.4). I reiterate I’m using 10.3.9 and it is a pristine installation with on updates applied to the OS itself. I get asked to send it in anyway. I decide to play with the drivers a little more… I fix the postflight scripts add a little sanity checking to the preflight scripts to no avail. I’m a little fed up with LaCie at this point, and decide to check on the OEM manufacturer of the cards site. Silicon Image. Well wouldn’t you know there is a version 1.4.1 of the Drivers for 10.3.9 that is not available on the LaCie website.
Woot, my LaCie S2S works now.
Lessons learned… Don’t trust LaCie’s QC and Documentation. I know support is mostly scripted so I can’t really blame them. Check for better drivers from OEM’s if you think you’re having driver issues.