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Adaptec 39160 Nightmare
Authored by: SLO_Dave on Dec 09, '02 01:07:31PM

I have also been bitten by the Adaptec 39160 problem with OS X. Early in the 2nd Q 2002 we purchased a Quicksilver DP 800 server and had the Adaptec card installed along with dual 73 GB UW drives, all recommended by our local Mac vendor and tech support. Our intent was to mirror the internal drives for operational redundancy. Little did we know that the Adaptec card was flawed in its operation with OS X.

We experienced total failure of the system three times, with "Keys out of Order" errors, resulting in data loss. This was our first server and it was in the shop for about 6 weeks. The tech bill was so large that it threatened our relationship with our local Mac vendor.

To their credit, every possible solution approach was tried. We replaced a motherboard based on Apple's Tech CD analysis of the system after one crash. As it turns out, the motherboard tested fine after removal, so there might be another issue here as well.

The Adaptec card was also swapped out with no change in system status. Adaptec support was anything but. Our tech support vendor eventually got a hold of an Adpatec engineer who suggested slowing down the read/write speeds of the drives.

This has worked pretty well, except for one recent crash (Keys out of order again) of one of the hard drives. If it were not for the fact we have external firewire drives for redundant back-up, this event would have severly hurt our business operation. As it was, we spent a lot of money for equipment that could not perform as intended or claimed by either Apple or Adaptec.

I still cannot believe that Adaptec markets the 39160 for OS X. Their performance claims are incompetent at best and criminal at worst. We are running at 40 MB/sec at that is the best we can get. Period.

When the problem first occured for us, we searched all the Mac boards looking for others with the same reported problem but we did not find any. I thought it incredible that we alone were facing this problem. While I am sorry to hear of the others listed on this thread, it at least confirms the problem exists.

Thanks to pmreiz for the heads-up on the Atto Tech card.

We do intend to get the UW speed and mirroring we originally intended. We are now running OS X Server 10.2.2. The funny thing is that Apple has a driver in this OS that "supports" the 39160, but it does not correct the problem.



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