Time Machine on Raid 1

I have had two Time Machine external hard drives crash within the last year, so I've decided to create a Raid 1 mirror to use as my Time Machine. I understand the basic requirement is that the drives be of the same size. I have two 1TB drives, different in size by only .03TB (999.16TB versus 999.13TB). However, the drives are of different manufacturers, and one is Firewire and the other is USB. Will I have an issue creating an efficient Raid 1 array?
Thanks,
Nick
Message was edited by: nickditoro

nickditoro wrote:
Thanks for the response about different connection types; that's what I was looking for. That takes me back to your other response and my reply about cloning TM periodically to another external drive. Is it possible with Carbon Copy Cloner or Superduper?
Nick
I haven't tried that, you can look over at the CCC forums if cloning a TM drive is possible and if TM will accept it afterwards.
Supposedly the only thing that can access a TM drive is TimeMachine, not EVEN ROOT USER (which CCC uses obviously), can access TM drive because of MAC (Mandatory Access Controls) built into OS X.
So Apple really ties everyone's hands with their TM solution and when your hard drive dies, or you can't use your Superdrive to c boot off the installer disk, your totally SOL with TimeMachine.
With a clone, your up on the clone in the time it takes to boot.
And, you can clone that to another drive, or a thousand drives, whatever gives you the most peace of mind.
Heck I got clones of Leopard and even Tiger laying around. All just a option boot away.
What you can do, is do both, a clone AND a TimeMachine drive, just make sure to label them so as you connect the clone OSX pops up that annoying "You want to make this a TimeMachine drive" window and you might make a mistake and say ok on a clone.
So like once a week you hook up the clone and run CCC to update it. Keep the TM drive connected all the time.
Some people do this. I don't see the need unless your prone to deleting stuff or can't do a "Save As..." for file revisions. That's the only thing TM is good for, not worth locking all one's data to being only accessible from TimeMachine if you ask me.
But using both is a option.
These forums are filled with woes about TimeMachine, but hardly any about cloning. After all a clone is a clone. Hold option and boot and it's just the same.

Similar Messages

Photo Storage and Time Machine in RAID

My wife currently stores her 35000 RAW image files as Masters on an External Western digital 4TB drive that is permanently connected to the computer to allow her to work easily in Aperture. I also copy that drive and store it off-site. Her time machine is a seperate external drive.
When I get round to upgrading her to a new Mac Pro , I would like to also switch to a 12 TB Pegasus R6 RAID enclosure.
My question is , would it be unwise to have both the Time Machine and her Master Images stored on the same drive ?

You should not literally store the master and its backup or archive on the same drive mechanism.
The idea is to eliminate as many common points of failure as possible. The failure of the power supply in that Pegasus cabinet, while unlikely, could cause such a failure.
You could consider a USB-3 enclosure (but NOT a flock of them, USB-3 is bandwidth limited in the MacPro cylinder). For Backup ONLY, a USB-2 enclosure would be adeqaute, but is too slow for production.

Time Machine vs Raid 0+1

Is Time Machine all that necessary if one has a four HD raid system set on raid 0+1 or on raid 5? Except for accidental deleting of a file all data is conserved and safe even if one of the HDs goes south.

sewbiz,
Time Machine has two ultimate functions, only one of which is disaster recovery.
The other, and perhaps more prominent function, is the file by file recovery of user-deleted data (just as you mention). Since RAID mirroring can't do anything about this, Time Machine is a perfect compliment to RAID.
Scott

Recurring directory errors in Time Machine backup

I'll try to make this brief:
Mac Pro 2 x 2.66 GHz Xeon
4 - 500 GB internal drives set up as 2 - striped 1 TB RAIDS
OS X 10.7.3
For years, I have used Time Machine to backup RAID #1 to RAID #2 with no errors at all. Recently, backups have been failing every few days. Disk Warrior rebuilds of the directory on the Time Machine backup RAID fix the problem for a few days.
When the problem was not being solved, I reinitialized and zeroed both drives in RAID #2. S.M.A.R.T. tests show the drives as fully functional. I checked both drives for bad blocks (using TechTool Pro 6.0.4), found none, and recreated RAID #2.
Every few days, the Time Machine backup fails and Disk Warrior finds numerous problems with the directory file on RAID #2, mostly iNode overlaps.
All tests on RAID #1 are clean.
Does anyone have thoughts on what I should try next, short of replacing drives that test out as functioning perfectly?

I'll try to make this brief:
Mac Pro 2 x 2.66 GHz Xeon
4 - 500 GB internal drives set up as 2 - striped 1 TB RAIDS
OS X 10.7.3
For years, I have used Time Machine to backup RAID #1 to RAID #2 with no errors at all. Recently, backups have been failing every few days. Disk Warrior rebuilds of the directory on the Time Machine backup RAID fix the problem for a few days.
When the problem was not being solved, I reinitialized and zeroed both drives in RAID #2. S.M.A.R.T. tests show the drives as fully functional. I checked both drives for bad blocks (using TechTool Pro 6.0.4), found none, and recreated RAID #2.
Every few days, the Time Machine backup fails and Disk Warrior finds numerous problems with the directory file on RAID #2, mostly iNode overlaps.
All tests on RAID #1 are clean.
Does anyone have thoughts on what I should try next, short of replacing drives that test out as functioning perfectly?

Using RAID 1 Hard Drive as an encrypted Time Machine Disk???

I'd like to purchase a RAID hard drive to use as a backup for my iMac with Time Machine, but a review on the Apple store site (emphasis mine) says:
"LacCie 4TB 2 big Thunderbolt Raid Hard Drive
Written by Alexander S from Calgary
Apr 9, 2012
Hey Guys!
Impressive, very quiet, in fact the quietest of all the drives I had. The speed increase is nice too, but of course, if the source is slower, you won't benefit from the speed that it is capable. Quiet is worth the price.
I did notice that, if I use it as a raid configuration, Disk Utility won't do permissions, unless I boot from it, unlike my firewire drive. All my drives and computers are encrypted, however you can't encrypt a raid configuration. Even using it as Time Capsule, it won't save to it, so it used image encryption. Haven't research this further yet.
One very nice thing I notice, there is no lag or spinning ball when you are waking up the unit, unlike the other drives using USB or Firewire. In fact, that was so annoying, that I would unmount the firewire drives asap when not needed. No spinning ball wakeup lag make it worth the money.
The large LED blue button is bright, you wouldn't want this where you sleep, however I don't need a night light in my office. LaCie may want to consider an option to dim or turn off the LED if desired.
When starting up my computer, the bluetooth keyboard and mouse, trackpad, usually take some seconds before I can move the mouse and enter password. Funny thing, it is available instantly when booting from the raid unit. I wonder why?
This is the results of about two week of use. I am seriously considering get another unit to match."
I encrypt my Time Machine backups. I'd like to run a backup drive in RAID 1 for safety. Does anyone know if this is possible?
Thank you!
(OS 10.8.2)

I wouldn't use RAID for TM, but...
http://pondini.org/TM/2.html
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4062015?start=0&tstart=0

Centralized Time Machine Backup on RAID 6 enable NAS

Hello. I have over 100 Mac computers on my network. I want to have Time Machine backups on each of these machine to a Centralized RAID 6 enabled NAS. All Machines are running Snow Leopard. Can anyone please guide me how to setup this. Thank you in Advance.

Sorry, but you're going to need another solution. Time Machine doesn't back-up to NAS devices: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1733

Using Time Machine to Backup an External Drive (RAID 1)

Is it possible to backup an external drive to another external drive using Time Machine in Mountain Lion?
The following diagram describes what I want to do. I am basically trying to use Time Machine as an external RAID 1 system. However, I don't want to buy a RAID 1 box. I want to have control of TWO OR MORE time machine setups. I don't want to backup my OS every time. I simply want to backup one external drive to another external drive. The drives are 2TB each, so the advice to buy a big hard drive to back everything up on won't work. Also, I am often swapping drives and would like to use this system for all of my projects and all of my drives. Any help would be great. Thanks for your time.
NOTE: I am on Lion and wanted to know if this was possible before upgrading.

To be clear, TM can back up your external drive perfectly well, provided it's in MacOS format. What it can't do is back up the external drive alone to one destination, and everything else to a different destination.
As for what you should use instead of TM, I don't really have an opinion. SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner are well regarded. You need to make some decisions about backup strategy before you choose a backup method. TM makes incremental backups, so you can revert to any of several earlier versions of a file. Those third-party products can do that too, though not as efficiently as TM. Also bear in my mind that a single backup is inadequate. You need more than one backup to be safe, and to be truly safe, at least one backup must be stored off-site at all times.

Time Machine to a Raid 5 Array

I bought a brand new tower a few weeks ago. This is our file server and is in production.
The problem is that the machine was purchased with a raid 5 array however the OS was installed on the main drive our database software is also on this drive.
I would like to know if its possible to use time machine to do a restore of the systems data to the raid array and then set it as the boot drive.
1. Will this work and are there any potential issues with this method.
2. Is there a better way to do this.

Yes, there are issues with having your operating system on a storage array. Were there a drive failure you would lose everything on the array including the ability to boot the system. Keep the OS where it is, and use the array for its intended purpose - storage.
You should also consider another array that you can use as backup for the existing one. Perhaps a mirrored array so your backup has a backup.

Time machine back up to G-Tech G-RAID Gen4 4TB via USB

I've purchased a second G-Tech G-Raid 4TB external hard drive to use to back up my iMac using time machine.
But I can't get it to back up via USB, I already have the same device which I use to store all my media iTunes, movies etc & this uses the only Firewire (FW800) port. As my iMac only has one firewire port (is there such thing as an FW800 adapter / hub that will allow me to conntct two devices to the single port?)
I have got time machine working via firewire which I used the first time as its suposed to be quicker, after all the data has backed up for the first time I tried swapping to the USB2 cable provided but time machine doest seem to see the drive & comes up with an error. If I swap back to firewire it works fine.
There is also an SATA cable that came with the drive but I don't know what this & there oisn't a port om my iMac that will fit it.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
JPGUK

iunlock wrote:
Open Time Machine Preferences... ->Add Back Up Disk (Encrypt Backups "unchecked.") ->Select, TimeMachineBackup (on "WDMyCloudDL4100_AFP_TimeMachineBackup.") ->Select, "Use Disk."Connect as: GuestThen I get this error message: "Time Machine can't access the backup disk "TimeMachineBackup". The operation couldn't be completed. (OSStatus error 2.)I've just got off the phone with WD Tech support, ran a bunch of commands, troubleshooted everything from reboot to directly connecting the Ethernet cable from computer to NAS etc....did it all. They've concluded that it may be a faulty device and to do an exchange under warrenty and/or contact the store for a replacement. The strange thing is that everything else seems to work fine. Here is my set up in case you're wondering: Mac Book Pro -> [Ethernet + USB 3.0] Adapter connected in the Thunderbolt slot => Gigabit Switch <= NAS directly connected to Gigabit swtich. Gigabit Switch => connected directly to the Router. I was maybe thinking that the Adapter may be the culprit, however, I've ran a successfull Time Machine Back up by plugging my external hard drive directly into the Adapter via USB 3.0 as the Adapater is a: [Ethernet + USB 3.0 -> Thunderbolt Port on the Mac.] Any ideas?Since you try to backup to TMB using Guest, that is why you get that error (OSStatus error 2.). Go the your NAS dashboard --> Share and make sure TMB is turn on for PUBLIC share. Unless you don't want TMB sahre to be public then next time backup your data to TMB using a credential account that your have allow to access the TMB share.

Restore Time Machine backup to Raid 0 (Striped set)?

I've been struggling with setting up my Mac mini (late 2012) server with a Striped RAID set and then restoring a Time Machine backup to the new RAID 0 volume. Here are the steps I have undertaken:
Bought a 3TB Airport Time Capsule and created a full restore of my existing Time Machine backups to it.
My Mac mini has dual 1TB hard drives. Pressed Command + R on bootup and entered recovery mode.
Using Disk Utility, I created a Striped RAID set by adding both my 1TB drives as slices to a new RAID set and clicked on Create.
After the RAID set was created, I exited Disk Utility.
Clicked on Restore from Time Machine Backup.
The process fails as it cannot create a Recovery Partition on a RAID set.
After much exploration, I think the problem can be resolved by attempting to Reinstall OS X on Step 5 and then attempting a Time Machine restore after the core OS is in place. Thoughts?

Additional Information
A Recovery partition cannot be created on RAID volumes. If your startup device is a RAID volume, you back up and reconfigure your computer to use a non-RAID boot volume. If needed, create a separate RAID volume for data which is not the target of the OS X installation. You can also create an external, bootable drive with a Recovery partition, as described above.
See this article if the following message appears during the install process:
"Install Failed: OS X could not be installed on your computer. OS X can't be installed on the disk because a recovery system can't be created. Visit www.apple.com/support/no-recovery to learn more"
From:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4649

Time Machine - A bag of hurt with RAID 0 volumes

Here's my situation:
Mac Pro with 4 internal Hard Drives. 2 of them are in RAID 0 and they are the boot volume. The 2 others are also in RAID 0 and are used as a Time Machine volume. Both volumes have a capacity of 1TB.
I had a problem with the boot volume which forced me to erase that volume. So the next logical step was to boot from the Leopard install DVD (10.5.4) and run the Restore from Time Machine application.
But once I reached the 'Select your destination volume' step it didn't show my internal RAID 0 volume.
I tried every possible configuration but the restore application didn't want to show the internal RAID 0 volume. If I would erase the 2 volumes from the RAID 0 as 2 seperate volumes they would show up. But that wasn't what I needed since the backup was larger than the capacity of 1 seperate hard drive.
Eventually I put the 2 drives in a second Mac Pro. Started that Mac Pro in FireWire disk mode and connected it to my Mac Pro with a FireWire 800 cable. Now, the boot volume would show up in the restore application.
After 12 hours of restoring my data and having almost finished the whole process the restore application gave me an error message saying that 'An error occured, please restart'. No explanation which error had occured. Also, I wasn't able to boot from the partially restored volume.
Conclusion:
1. Apple should fix the Time Machine restore utility so that it would find internal RAID 0 volumes.
2. I still don't have a restored machine. The only possibility now is to reinstall the OS and all the applications manually and retrieve my backup data manually from the Time Machine backup.
3. I'm reverting back to CCC for making backups
David

Carolyn Thanks for quick response and advice.
Firstly I erred re the 167 re Open DNS . I did have in correct if preferences!
However...
I followed your advice and cleared all DNS except for the Open DNS ones.
That rectified the problems on the iMac.
BUT, before I can get too excited, I still have Safari NOT opening some windows on the MBP afterreverting to only Open DNS!
Specifically Macupdate, EhMac and most links from sites set up on My Yahoo.... such as New York Times, CBC, BBC etc.
eg - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/business/economy/08obama.html?exprod=myyahoo
or
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/01/07/bc-highway-mudslide.h tml?ref=rss
The two above fly open on Imac but take three or more minutes on MBP!
Yet other links are open promptly
So I think it is more than just DNS.

Hello I bought a G-Raid GR4 4000 4 TB and used it for a backup with my new Imac27. Now this is all I get. "Time Machine couldn't complete the backup to "G-RAID". to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder.

Hello I bought a G-Raid GR4 4000 4 TB and used it for a backup with my new Imac27. Now this is all I get. "Time Machine couldn’t complete the backup to “G-RAID”. to complete backup. An error occurred while creating the backup folder."
Any idea what I should do?

If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the word "Starting" (without the quotes) in the String Matching text field. You should now see log messages with the words "Starting * backup," where * represents any of the words "automatic," "manual," or "standard." Note the timestamp of the last such message. Clear the text field and scroll back in the log to that time. Select the messages timestamped from then until the end of the backup, or the end of the log if that's not clear. Copy them (command-C) to the Clipboard. Paste (command-V) into a reply to this message.
If all you see are messages that contain the word "Starting," you didn't clear the search box.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don't post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. Don't post more than is requested.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Some personal information, such as the names of your files, may be included — anonymize before posting.

RAIDS and Time Machine?

I want to get a Mac Pro with 4 500 GB HDs. I want to stripe two of the HDs together, and then stripe the other 2 together giving me two RAID 0's of 1 Terabyte each.
Then can I use Time Machine when it is released to backup the primary RAID to the secondary RAID.
Would this be a good solution?

Assuming your RAID setup is as follows:
Drive 1 and Drive 2 are Striped into a RAID 0 (Logical Disk 1)
Drive 3 and Drive 4 are Striped into a RAID 0 (Logical Disk 2)
Logical Disk 1 and Logical Disk 2 are Mirrored into a RAID 1
You can remove Logical Disk 2 from your Mirrored RAID array with no noticeable difference in your system. You could then use Drive 3 and Drive 4 separately or Re-Stripe them into a RAID 0 Logical Disk 2 which could then be used as the backup disk for Time Machine.
If your Logical Disk 1 RAID fails and it is mirrored with Logical Disk 2 all your data will be safe though running/existing exclusively on Logical Disk 2 until you replace the faulty drive in Logical Disk 1.
If your Logical Disk 1 RAID fails and it is not mirrored with Logical Disk 2 then you will lose all the data on Logical Disk 1 even though only one of the two drives failed.
If your Logical Disk 1 RAID fails and you have been using Logical Disk 2 as your Time Machine drive you will (in most circumstances) be able to replace the failed drive, recreate a Striped RAID 0 Logical Disk 1 from Drive 1 and Drive 2 and then use Time Machine to restore your files and applications. As I do not have the Leopard Preview I cannot tell you how this will work in practice but it is part of Time Machine's prerogative to aid in situations like this.
There is a caveat to keep in mind concerning Time Machine that may or may not affect you depending on how you use your computer. John Siracussa at ArsTechnica explains it very well so I'll just copy and paste from his recent article on Time Machine:
"There's still plenty of room for legitimate Time Machine criticism, however. While the hard link trees are a clever solution, given the constraints of HFS+, the strategy dictates a file-level granularity for all backups. In other words, if you change a single byte of a 500MB file, the entire 500MB file will be copied to the backup volume during the next Time Machine backup. Frequent modifications to large files will fill your backup volume very quickly."
"Worse, there does not appear to be a way to prioritize backup retention. When space runs out on the backup volume, presumably Time Machine will recycle old space. But if it does so based on date rather than (user-specified) "importance", a relatively unimportant change to a large file could necessitate the loss of hundreds of small files from the backup volume. Where once a small text file may have had an entire year's worth of revisions on the backup volume, now only the past month's revisions may exist due to the need to reclaim space for a few recently modified large files."
So just keep in mind that if you want Time Machine to keep a backup of your entire system throughout it's use you will in all likelihood need considerably more storage space than the amount available on the drive(s) Time Machine is monitoring.
-Berylium
Mac OS X (10.4.7)

What means: Promise Pegasus compatible with Time Machine RAID-support

On the (Dutch) Apple shop it is stated at the Promise Pegasus page: the Promise Pegasus is compatible with Time Machine RAID-support.
What does this mean? What is then the "physical connection path" between the TC and the Thunderbolt Pegasus RAID system?

Thanks for responding to my question. I guess I'm not sure I understand your reply though. I had no problem installing OS X on the 3TB WD Caviar Green and WD assured me that if I wanted to install only Windows 7 on it, there would be no compatibility issues. The problem lies with wanting the drive to be dual-bootable I guess via using Boot Camp (I know of no other way to go about it). The tech at OWC (where I bought the drive) said he had never heard of any problems with being able to install both Mac and Windows OS on the drive. In fact, he gave the same reply as yours: most hard drives should be able to work perfectly fine with your Mac. It's just that I can't get XP or Windows 7 (32 bit or 64 bit) to install on the 2nd partition, making the drive I have now not dual-bootable. The tech said 2TB hard drives were different and should solve the problem but when I asked him for any discernible spec I could look for in shopping for a replacement drive, he couldn't give me one, i.e. most drives should be okay. I have paid to have the 3TB installed and will have to pay to get the drive taken out and a replacement put back in -- I want to make sure whatever drive I put in this time allows me to have 2 partitions: one for my Mac OSX system and the other for my Windows enviroment (either XP or Windows 7).
If there is a work-around not involving Boot Camp, please let me know. I thought the reason for using Boot Camp as opposed to Disk Utility to create the dual-bootable drive was the benefit of using Mac drivers on the Windows side.
If there is another way, I don't understand why PC world made this blanket statement:
"Mac users should know that WD's new drives do not support Boot Camp, therefore they cannot be used as a dual-boot hard drive."

Time Machine RAID-1 External

I have an iMac 2011 model and am looking to get the all flash 2012, and will put my itunes media onto a 2TB or 3TB external drive.
Now to back up both my Mac and the iTunes drive, i was thinking of either a 4TB single drive back-up or a RAID-1 4TB back-up with 2x4TB drives.
If i understand correctly, with a RAID 1 back-up, the data on Disk1 will duplicate to Disk2 so if one drive fails my Time machine is still backed-up??
Is this an ideal set-up? my main concern is the amount of data im backing up and insstead of using rotating drives, best to just have the redundancy upfront?

Because I have a significant number of large files which do not change (reference only), and "archive" type files (finished projects) which I retain only for future reference, I have a "two-backup" strategy, consisting of (1) a Time Machine backup for my boot drive and all my applications and active work, and (2) an "Archive" drive, cloned automatically on a periodic basis, so all that archive-type data is available for reference but is not taking up space in my TM backup.
If I had a setup like yours, I would use the external as you indicate, for your iTunes library, and other things of an "archival" character, and automatically clone that (using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper, etc.) to one of the RAID drives. Then I would use the other RAID drive as a TM backup for my startup drive.
It is helpful to remember that Time Machine backs up and keeps every version of each file, so the more files you are backing up with TM, the faster it will fill up your TM backup drive. To my way of thinking, files that are "reference-only," and are not going to change, do not need to take up space in a TM backup. I have a 500GB Time Capsule which has more than a year's worth of TM backups of the roughly 250GB of data (system, apps and documents) on my boot drive.
You might consider something similar. Hope this helps.

Time Machine on Raid 1

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