Areca ARC-1882i With FreeNAS 8.0.2

[chris027]

Hi guys - I just want to report on my success using the Areca ARC-1882i and FreeNAS 8.0.2. I didn't have to install any additional drivers. FreeNAS supported this card out of the box. Below are my system details for all who are interested.


Intel Mac Pro
FreeNAS Build FreeNAS-8.0.2-RELEASE-amd64 (8288)
Platform Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5462 @ 2.80GHz
Memory 10216MB
OS Version FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE-p3
Dual Intel NICs using LACP
Areca ARC-1882i -> The Areca card is setup with 8 2TB RAID 0 (single disk) arrays so I can use ZFS to its full potential and still use the good aspects of the Areca card. Plus others seem to have had issues using pass-through mode on this card.
>> Firmware Version V1.49 2011-11-02
>> BOOT ROM Version V1.49 2011-10-13
>> PL Firmware Version 11.0.1.0


On another note: I tried to use the LSi 9211-8i in my Intel Mac Pro but was unable to boot any OS other than OS X. The boot sequence failed while showing LSi card information.

 

[Siobhter]

I want to know more specifically what you did...

Are you booting from an internal drive? I'm trying to get mine to work by using the built-in SATA hard drive ports instead off of a RAID card, which means I need to boot off of a USB Flash drive. I haven't gotten this to work yet, but I was hoping that maybe you could give me some direction... :)

Thanks,
Josh

 

[chris027]

Hi Josh - I am booting a 2.5" PATA drive connected to the Mac Pro DVD-ROM ribbon cable.The SATA ports on the actual motherboard of a Mac Pro are usable only within OS X. You can spend days or weeks trying to get these ports to function under a different OS, and you may succeed, but I gave up on this method after spending way too much time on it.

I was also unable to boot from a USB flash drive in the Mac Pro but booting from a USB hard drive worked just fine. I switched to an internal PATA drive because I could enclose all components inside the case.

Let me know if I didn't answer your question or only confused the situation. I'll be happy to share more of my frustrating experience that ended on a good note with the Areca ARC-1882i.

 

[Siobhter]

It's funny you should mention that...

I had an IDE hard drive laying around and I thought "what if I put that in the second optical drive bay?" I'm in the middle of installing FreeNAS via BootCamp. Is that how you installed onto the internal drive you added?

Also, since you filled me in on the fact that the built-in SATA ports don't work, I'll have to get a RAID card in there. I have a PCIx RAID card that I'll try to use in the meantime but I'll look into procuring the card you mentioned in your original post. Do you have any pointers on the drive mounting/wiring?

Thanks again,
Josh

 

[chris027]

I don't have OS X or any Boot Camp anything installed on the Mac Pro. For the installation of FreeNAS I believe I just booted up with the CD and installed to the PATA drive. I know I also installed FreeNAS a few times while an OS X drive was still connected, I held the Option key to bring up the boot disk options. I selected the FreeNAS CD, then disconnected the OS X drive, then installed to the PATA drive.


Give your RAID card a shot but don't wast days trying to get it to function. The Mac Pro is a strange beast.

To mount 8 drives I use the MaxPro from Max Upgrades. This requries removal of the DVD drive, but I simply connected them via USB.

http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_id=158


I also use the MaxConnect SAS/SATA Link for Mac Pro Systems to connect the extra four drives to the card.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/MaxUpgrades/SZDCMSASR2MS/

 

[Siobhter]

I can't seem to get my MacPro to boot off of the CD unless I first install OSX and then use BootCamp Utility to setup a partition and then boot off of the FreeNas CD. Did you use the 32bit or 64bit ISO?

UPDATE: I burned the CD again, deleted all the partitions from the IDE drive I was using, and I was able to boot off the CD and get FreeNAS installed on the internal drive. :)

UPDATE Pt 2: I was able to use the SATA ports that are built into the mother board with 4 different drives. I successfully built a RAID z2 volume, which is pretty sweet to be able to do with dissimilar hardware. I haven't tried to use the RAID card that I had laying around yet...