To prepare for my new Mac Pro 2013 I decided to prepare a new Areca 8050 from OWC with 21 TB of storage.
OWC did a good job of shipping the equipment and I had reviewed some other posts knowing that the configuration may be problematic, so I downloaded the User Guide in advance.
Here are my recommendations for anyone like myself new to the installation:
a) Use Firefox not Safari
b) Upgrade the firmware
For the record here are the steps I performed:
1) I installed the 8 drives (8 * 3 TB). Got off on the wrong foot by using round headed screws that were provided, but then noticed that there were flat screws so I changed all 32 installed and then the drives slide easily into the drive bays.
2) Used the web configuration tool on ethernet.
3) Ran the Quick configure as Raid 5 – no spare drives – unit hung even though the lights flashed – progress on the front panel stuck at at 2.8% after 10 hours. Had to unplug the power cord to restart it.
4) Plugged back in, it started the initialization again and got to 4.3% in 3 hours. Hung some where early in the process I assume.
4.1) Powered off by unplugging but no further progress with initialization. Couldn’t get any response from web interface from unit.
4.2) Pulled the plug again and this time pulled all the drives. Got the web interface to respond since there were no drives to initialize.
5) Downloaded new firmware – this is where I discovered Safari not working. Used Firefox and eventually and got all the files installed except BIOS file which it said was invalid.
5.1) Switched to Firefox and had no web problems however the unit keeps coming up with address 192.168.1.100 rather than 192.169.1.100 (contrary to the quick guide).
6) Restarted the Raid initialization from scratch.
7) Raid 5 Initialization: at 11:58 its at 9.3%, 10.8% at 12:03 so lets call about 1.5% in 5 minutes (18% per hour) or 5.5 hours for the 21TB.
8) 13:20 unit appears to have restarted, 28.8%
9) 15:48 – 51.8%
10) 17:50 84%
11) It finished and I configured the volumes and ran Blackmajic Disk Test: 560 MB/s Read, 635 write.
12) After 10 days – no issues so far. Speed using Mac Pro 2013 600mB/s Read, 660 MBs Write.
13) Feb 2 – I have now confirmed that this drive it prevents the Mac from sleeping. See http://jeffgardner.ca/Blog/?p=751
Problem: Can’t see contents of Camera Raw images.
When printing images for some Customers, they provide me with JPEGs rather than Camera Raw image files even though their cameras have camera raw capability. The reason quoted is that Windows does not display the camera raw file thumbnail when using Windows Explorer and thus the camera raw files are too hard to manage. JPEGS are used instead.
Solution: For those on Windows XP or Vista, you can download a Camera Raw viewer, free from Microsoft so that you can see a thumbnail in Windows Explorer.
Download from: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26829
Note: D7000 not supported by Microsoft as of Jan 6, 2012. Should be available soon.