Mac Pro Connection Issues

Drobo - End of Sale DroboPro
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I’ve searched all over to see if anyone else was having a similar problem and a solution, but haven’t found anything. I apologize if this is an easy one and right under my nose. I just got a DroboPro (upgraded from a USB 1st Gen and FW 2nd units). I plugged it into my Mac Pro through the first Ethernet port. I have had a number of problems almost since day one, basically a couple of reboots, but mainly two or three shutdowns in the middle of some big copies. In addition, it’s speed is unacceptable.

I contacted Drobo support and they had me replace drives 7 & 8 which did nothing. I also bought a new CAT-5E cable (thinking my problem was using an older CAT-5 cable). I was about to call support last Friday, but I thought before I give them an earful, I’ll just try and hook it up to my 13” MacBook Pro using the supplied Category 5 cable and run it through the same torture that was causing problems hooked up to my Mac Pro. That is, doing some big copies with relocating masters in Aperture. To my surprise (well, not really), it ran as I would expected it to run all along. I don’t know if it was a speed demon, but it was speedy enough, and I was able to use it without any issues. So that would seem to take the Drobo and the drives out as being the problem. I’m going to assume my new CAT-5e cable is good too, which leaves something with the Mac Pro as the problem.

I hooked it back up to the Mac Pro, but this time through FireWire and ran it that way through weekend with no problems. I hooked it back up through iSCSI last night after trying to shut some background processes down (such as Little Snitch, Air Video etc.) and while no shutdowns, it’s still a dog. The no shutdown thing could just be that I haven’t done anything real big with it yet. Has anyone else had this problem? Does anyone have any ideas? I’m at a loss. I would be indebted.

My setup (if this helps):
Early 2008 Mac Pro 2.8GHz (12 Core)
12 GB RAM 2 TB internal drive storage
Ethernet 1 – DroboPro (all 8 bays 1TB 2TB 2TB 500GB 500GB 500GB 1TB 1TB)
Ethernet 2 – Time Capsule (Internet)
A bunch of crap running, probably too much to list here, but I can’t imagine what would be causing problems with Ethernet 1 and a gigabit connection to the Drobo.

Thanks,
Eric

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Have you tried the 2nd ethernet card? Just for testing purposes.

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No, I hadn’t, but I was wondering the same thing. I will give that a shot tonight when I get home.

Thanks

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Great keep us updated!

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Are you booting the Mac Pro in 64 bit mode?

Even with the updates installed that are supposed to support 64 bit mode, on my 09 Mac Pro the performance was terrible. Slower than connecting with USB 2.0. Booting in 32 bit mode improved performance dramatically.

Also I connect with CAT 6 cables, if that matters.

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Yes, I am. That is one thing I forgot to mention. I thought of rebooting in 32 bit, but didn’t think that would make a difference with the latest updates. I will give that a try and see what happens. Thanks

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Thanks Cynicalone! That seemed to do the trick. It’s running a lot faster now, easily two to three times faster than in 64 bit mode. So, for the record DroboPro supports 64 bit, but in reality, not so much maybe. That’s ok, I’m fine running in 32 bit for now. I think I’ll get a CAT-6 cable too. I’m willing to try anything to squeeze every bit of performance I can.