Mac OS X 10.5.6: Areca RAID cards not functioning

Mac users who have had Areca RAID controller cards installed in their Mac Pros have been experiencing problems with the computer after updating to Mac OS X 10.5.6.

Apple Discussions poster oceaneye writes:

"Hi thought Id give a heads up to anyone with a Areca Raid card 1220 not to install 10.5.6 as after the installation the raid is no longer accessible. I have a another system disc which has 10.5.5 on it and this sees the raid no problem."

When users with the Areca RAID cards installed have updated to 10.5.6, their RAID volumes will not show up. The data is not lost, but the system will not recognize the RAID media, and as such render the drive useless. Disk Utility will not see the device, so users will not be able to force the drive to mount or check the disk for errors.

This problem is just due to a driver incompatibility with 10.5.6 (card firmware updates have not helped some users), and Areca has released an update which addresses this problem. It is recommended that users download and install the appropriate driver from this site. After installing the updated driver, the system will need to be restarted and the RAID drive should show up normally again.