sata raid problems?

hello everyone
a while ago i bought a sata raid in a burly box with a Sonnet Tempo X4P PCI-X external 4 port host card. i put 4 320 gig seagte drives in it. it is currently 7% filled.
since starting to use it my whole system has been much more unstable. on occassion (probably 4-5 times in last month) my entire system will crash when the computer tries to access files on the raid system (spinning ball forcing me to hard shutdown the computer).
has anyone else had propblems with these external raids, and if so, have they been able to resolve them in any way?
thanks!
greg
g5 dual 2ghz, 2.5 gb ram

How have you set up the RAID?

Can you give us a full spec of the drives and power supply (including extention leads and UPS if applicable) as well as the configuration of the HDD formatting ie: RAID 0, RAID 1, Mac OS+, Extended, Journaled?

Also you might want to check the cards and the cables are all in correctly and firmly with ample cooling for the drives as well as the SATA card (eg not putting the Mac next to a radiator)

If you don't already you really need to turn the RAID on before the Mac as SATA is more fussy about hot swapping than FireWire.

Give more rather than less detail on these types of questions please and we'll try to point you in the right direction.


Ben



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ben
thanks for the reply
i will answer the questions tonight, but one quick response
i have been consistently turning the raid on after the mac, and off befor ethe mac (properly ejecting it though)
i will start turning it on before the mac and turning it off after.
thanks
check in later - i'll answer the other questions
and thanks so much for the response!!
greg

No need to eject it

Just shut down as normal - this could be causing the problems.

In future

Booting up:

Turn on any speakers/sound devices > Turn on monitors (CRT, Broadcast, LCD) > Turn on external SATA HDD(s) > Turn on mac

Shutting down"

Shut down Mac > (when Mac has completely shut down) switch off SATA HDD(s) > Turn off monitors then speakers.

The reason I suggest an order for this is because of "noise" on the powersupply going into the HDDs and Mac.

These can be very sensitive, high powered speakers and CRT TV/monitors can really jolt the flow (and High tension PSUs & the Tubes in CRTs give out quite a massive EMR) and although I've never had any serious problems myself, the interference from turning things on/off in these orders seems to be the least problematic.

But you MUST turn the SATA on BEFORE the Mac boot-up

and

Off AFTER the Mac Shutdown.

You may need to run some diagnostics on the RAID due to the way you have used it so far - alternatively you can reformat and just start-a-fresh with the new power-up-down order above.

Regards

Ben

PS It doesn't matter too much about the order of FireWire and USB 1&2 devices they are far less temperamental than SATA.



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