Disk Utility Raid question

Is it software based RAID? or does the disk utility control a hardware based RAID?

For every disk drive I keep two backups. Rather than relying on mirror, which copies problems, and protects only from a hard failure, a FW800 and eSATA might be the way to go.
SoftRAID ($149 3rd party) will alert you on any I/O error and supports "stripe reads" from mirror if you go that route.
Zero your drive, backups, good maintenance. You can also backup to disk images.
Always always have an emergency boot drive AND a copy of the OS before you make any updates.
It is possible to partition a drive and then stripe or mirror using part of the drives to other identical drives. Performance of your "0+1" is poor.
If you are like most, over the years I've tried various setups and configurations, and continue to, in part to test and tweak, or to learn along the way. But backup sets are deeply ingrained from over 30 years of handling files, systems and data. And in the rare event of a drive failure, most of the time a simple reformat (or 7-way write erase nowadays) works. And there are programs to test and map out bad sectors. Heat more than anything shortens a drive's life, assuming the drive's mechanics are good (most are).
You have your drives, so can't sell you on which drives are enterprise, optimized or best for RAID (some are not suitable, and some have problems).

Similar Messages

  • Disk Utility Raid 1

    I have an iMac running OS X version 10.8.5 , Processor 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5, Memory 4GB 1333 MHz DDR3 .
    I use Time Machine to back up on a WD MyBookStudio. I recently had a disk error:
    I ran disk utility:
    2013-10-21 19:34:34 -0500: Checking volume information.
    2013-10-21 19:34:34 -0500: The volume Time Machine was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.
    2013-10-21 19:34:35 -0500: Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.2013-10-21 19:34:35 -0500:
    2013-10-21 19:34:35 -0500: Disk Utility stopped verifying “Time Machine”: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
    2013-10-21 19:34:35 -0500:
    I ran the repair tool and repaired the volume:
    2013-10-23 09:55:34 -0500: The volume Time Machine was repaired successfully.
    2013-10-23 09:55:34 -0500: Volume repair complete.2013-10-23 09:55:34 -0500: Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.2013-10-23 09:55:35 -0500: Repair tool completed:
    2013-10-23 09:55:35 -0500:
    2013-10-23 09:55:35 -0500:
    Should I be concerned about this error and get another backup disk?
    Should I get and additional WD MyBookStudio and run Disk Utility Raid 1 to have 2 duplicate drives?
    How well does Disk Utility Raid 1 work?
    Where can I find more information about running Disk Utility Raid 1?
    Thanks for your help !!!

    bump

  • Disk Utility RAID Issue

    I'm trying to determine if the problems that I'm encountering are a software issue or a hardware issue.
    I'm setting up a Mac Pro with Leopard and have four Maxtor 6G160E0 160GB hard drives that I'm trying to set up as two Mirrored drive sets. Everything seemed to go fine, created the two mirror sets, installed Leopard, configured and tested two user accounts and Office 2004, then updated everything to the latest version. When done I shut it down planning on moving it to it's final home tonight.
    But, when I turned it on both mirror sets were degraded - all four drives were still recognized as RAID slices but came up as failed in the RAID tab. I saw no errors reported in the log so I assumed that those two drives were faulty. I shut down, moved the good drives to bays 1 & 2 and rebooted.
    First reboot gave me a prohibition symbol instead of the usual Apple. Powered down and on and it booted fine but the second drive came up as a failed RAID slice. Rebooted again and both were fine.
    I reinstalled the two "failed" drives and reformatted them - both reformatted fine and mounted without problems. I unmounted the new partition just in case, but, when I tried to rebuild the RAIDs I get the following in the error log:
    11/1/07 7:26:00 PM Disk Utility[141] Preparing to erase : “Untitled”
    11/1/07 7:26:00 PM Disk Utility[141] Partition Scheme: GUID Partition Table
    11/1/07 7:26:00 PM Disk Utility[141] 1 volume will be created
    11/1/07 7:26:00 PM Disk Utility[141] Name : “Untitled”
    11/1/07 7:26:00 PM Disk Utility[141] Size : 149.1 GB
    11/1/07 7:26:00 PM Disk Utility[141] Filesystem : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
    11/1/07 7:26:00 PM Disk Utility[141] Creating partition map.
    11/1/07 7:26:03 PM Disk Utility[141] Formatting disk1s2 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name Untitled.
    11/1/07 7:26:06 PM Disk Utility[141] Erase complete.
    11/1/07 7:26:12 PM Disk Utility[141] Unmount of “Untitled” succeeded
    11/1/07 7:26:31 PM Disk Utility[141] Rebuilding RAID
    11/1/07 7:26:31 PM Disk Utility[141] Filesystem: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
    11/1/07 7:26:31 PM Disk Utility[141] RAID type: Mirrored RAID Set
    11/1/07 7:26:31 PM Disk Utility[141] RAID set name: “Yorktown”
    11/1/07 7:26:31 PM Disk Utility[141] RAID set status before rebuild: “”
    11/1/07 7:26:31 PM Disk Utility[141] RAID chunk size: 32K (default)
    11/1/07 7:26:31 PM Disk Utility[141] Mirror Auto Rebuild: Disabled (default)
    11/1/07 7:26:31 PM Disk Utility[141] 2 members
    11/1/07 7:26:31 PM Disk Utility[141] RAID Slice (disk0s2) - Online
    11/1/07 7:26:31 PM Disk Utility[141] Maxtor 6G160E0 Media (disk1) - New
    11/1/07 7:26:32 PM Disk Utility[141] Error rebuilding RAID: Unrecognized Filesystem.
    11/1/07 7:26:33 PM Disk Utility[141] RAID failed: Unrecognized Filesystem.
    I'm at a loss at the moment. I am leaning towards bad drives, but FOUR bad drives all at once is suspicious.
    I've searched for similar issues and found none so I thought I'd check here and see if anyone had any ideas.

    G'day Zeekm,
    Thank you for that. I did this and it seems to work. The Disk Utility GUI does not seem to work.
    Hope this helps some one,
    #Checked the RAID status
    root# diskutil checkRAID
    RAID SETS
    ===============================================================================
    Name: Server_HD
    Unique ID: 7E31E20E-F53D-4D76-AD37-139C4E1440AB
    Type: Mirror
    Status: Degraded
    Size: 1000070610944 B
    Device Node: disk2
    Apple RAID Version: 2
    # Device Node UUID Status
    0 disk1s3 BAC72F86-B05F-4B0F-97D3-58A6207E7DFA Failed
    1 disk0s3 2BFB55BB-EFF9-438C-A1F9-A8ED7A93D385 Online
    ===============================================================================
    #Told it to resync
    root# diskutil repairMirror disk2 disk1s3
    Note: Syncing data between mirror partitions can take a very long time.
    Note: The mirror should now be repairing itself. You can check its status using 'diskutil listRAID'.
    temp:~ root# diskutil listRAID
    RAID SETS
    ===============================================================================
    Name: Server_HD
    Unique ID: 7E31E20E-F53D-4D76-AD37-139C4E1440AB
    Type: Mirror
    Status: Degraded
    Size: 1000070610944 B
    Device Node: disk2
    Apple RAID Version: 2
    # Device Node UUID Status
    0 disk1s3 9D955C85-7EC0-4E92-848A-62D9F7C12EED 0% (Rebuilding)
    1 disk0s3 2BFB55BB-EFF9-438C-A1F9-A8ED7A93D385 Online
    ===============================================================================
    Hope this helps,
    Cheers,
    Arthur

  • Disk Utility + A Question For CD ROM Drives

    Hello, I Own A MacBook, It Was Shipped With Tiger On It And I Upgraded It To Leopard. Now A Little While Ago I Did A Format And Install To Start Fresh Again, The Internal HDD Is 80Gb, I Needed More So i Got A 80Gb EXTERNAL HDD. i wanted to partition it to organize it, but when i open disk utility, it just starts to open, Then It Stops.....And Quits Itself, And I Really Need It! In The Meantime Is There Any Other APPS that are like disk utility? for Mac OS X?
    And i Got A Question, I Have A Driver CD And It Is A CD The Size Of A Gamecube Game, And I Want To Know If I Can Insert It Into My MacBooks CD Rom Drive, Without Regreting What I Did.
    Thanks in advance!
    P.S IM NOW PC FREE! WOOOO HOOO!

    Its A Homemade One, I Bought The Enclosure And Inserted An Old Drive, Its a 80Gb Western Digital.
    No It Does Not Work W/ The Drive Disconnected
    Im willing To Re-Install Everything so ill just back stuff up on the external And Re-Install

  • Disk utility permissions question

    Hello,
    I am VERY happy with my Mac. However, since installing OS10.5 (upgrade from my 10.4) whenever I used my Disk Utility to repair permissions, I get a HUGE list of repairs. Every time I used the Utility, it comes up with this huge list that, as far as I can tell, is all the same.
    So my question is, is it actually repairing the permissions?
    I've never had this happen on my previous OS. If something showed up, it repaired it and then, when I run the utility again, it shows that all is well and no repairs are necessary.
    Can anyone help me? I have also been having problems with my Toast Titanium 10 and my MOTU Digital Performer 5 since my OS upgrade.
    I took a screen shot of my Utility permissions after it's been run. I could send that to you if you would need to see it.
    Thank you for all your help!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Welcome to Apple Discussions:
    It's always good to search first.
    Check this thread for starters:
    http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9422112&#9422112

  • See a Disk Utility RAID on another Start Up?

    Hey
    we made a mirrored RAID with two FireWire externals. How can we see the RAID set while booted from another Start Up Volume - without the Holy Hard Drive Trinity "Initialize, Ignore, Eject" coming up?
    Is there a pref file that need so to be copied over? BTW the set was created while running Server 10.4 - the other start up is 10.3+ - in case that makes a difference... (it's one partition tho.) Or do we say "ignore" that repair with Disk Utility?
    Tim
    MacBook (BootCamp), various Macs and servers   Mac OS X (10.4.7)  

    RAID of any time created with Tiger are not backward compatible with Panther.
    For that you would need SoftRAID or to create the RAID under Panther. Quite a few changes and improvements went into Tiger (and again w/ 10.4.4 I believe).
    And, to really do FW800 RAID you want each drive on independent bus/channels as well (I had to invest in two PCI controllers).

  • RAID card or Disk Utility RAID - Need simple comparison please.

    Folks, I am trying to make sense of the necessity or lack thereof for Apple's RAID card. Can someone provide a simple breakdown or comparison of the RAID card and/or loading the Mac Pro with drives and striping them using Disk Utility. I was under the impression that I could buy a Mac Pro, fill up the drive slots and just have Disk Utility set up the RAID. I'll be working with HD.
    Enlighten me please

    Can someone provide a simple breakdown or comparison of the RAID card and/or loading the Mac Pro with drives and striping them using Disk Utility.
    Users that are working with uncompressed HD 1920x1080 10bit RGB video usually aim for storage speeds of 240MB/sec or more. Obtaining this level of performance across the RAID is the trick.
    The Apple RAID 5 card can provide 306MB/sec. when configured as a striped RAID set, using four Seagate 250GB model 7200.10 internal hard drives with 16MB cache, when the volume is empty. By the time the striped RAID set reaches 80% full performance drops to 214MB/sec. A setup that can provide 240MB/sec. when the volume is 100% full will provide a more reliable configuration for 1080 uncompressed HD video processing.
    Disk Utility can provide this same level of performance without the RAID 5 card.
    So what is the advantage of the Apple RAID 5 card?
    The redundancy of RAID 5 can add a layer of protection against the failure of a single hard drive. RAID 5 can be rebuilt whereas RAID 0 provides zero data protection. The problem with RAID 5 in a four drive setup is that one disk is required for storing parity data. This leaves the RAID 5 slower as only 3 disks can be used for performance. In a RAID 5 four drive setup the top speed available will usually be approximately 210MB/sec. and when full closer to 180MB/sec. As you can see RAID 5 adds some data protection but the price is lower performance. That is the feature that the Apple RAID 5 card offers combined with a bootable internal solution.
    Do I need 240MB/sec. performance?
    Users that are not working with uncompressed HD 1920x1080 10bit video may find slower RAID performance will work for them. HDV requires approx. 25MB/sec and DVCPRO HD needs 100MB/sec.
    On the other hand, when I am working with large video files the faster the RAID, the easier it is to work with large files. So while I may not have dropped frames with slower DV formats I still
    prefer to work with as fast of a RAID configuration as I can justify.
    Other Options?
    The Mac Pro has many superior performance options available for creating fast RAID volumes. My current favorite setup is the eight channel Areca ARC-1221x RAID 6 controller paired with an external Enhance E8-ML enclosure. You can see an AMUG review of it here:
    http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/areca/1221x/
    This setup provides a RAID 6 array with twice the redundancy of RAID 5. It also supports up to eight hard drives which significantly enhances performance. Using eight Seagate 320GB model 7200.10 hard drives in a RAID 6 configuration with the ARC-1221x provides over 430MB/sec. when empty and over 220MB/sec when 100% full. Up to two drives can fail and the RAID can still be rebuilt. The ARC-1221x is available to AMUG members for $680 until the end of the month here:
    http://www.tekramonline.com/amugpromos.html
    The Enhance E8-ML 8 bay enclosure is $595. Details are here:
    http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/enhance/e8/
    You will also need two external Mini-SAS to Infiniband cable model Ext-MS-1MSB. I got mine here:
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000FUOMO0/arizomacinusergr
    So for $1340 you get an 8 bay RAID 6 setup that provides awesome performance, supports RAID levels 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10 or JBOD and can even be setup to boot the Mac Pro with any of these RAID configurations. I think this is a great setup.
    More Options
    If the user already has SATA PM enclosures and wants to add external RAID 5 capability for minimal cost, HighPoint has introduced the new RocketRAID 2314.
    http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/2314/
    The HighPoint RocketRAID 2314 only costs $200 but it adds nice RAID 5 performance with SATA PM enclosures when using the new Mac version 2.11 driver. Using two SATA PM enclosures with 5 hard drives mounted in each enclosure for a total of 10 drives can provide RAID 5 performance of over 370MB/sec when empty and over 318MB/sec when 100% full. It doesn't offer RAID 6 or boot capability but this is very nice RAID 5 setup.
    The card costs $180 on sale here:
    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000NAXGIU/arizomacinusergr
    Two quiet Sonnet 500P five bay enclosures will run $1000
    http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/sonnet/500p/
    So for $1180 users have a high performance RAID 5 setup that supports up to ten SATA hard drives. The RAID 5 performance is twice as powerful as an internal four bay solution. Plus, this setup allows users to still utilize the Mac Pro internal bays for importing more data or for backup.
    The Apple RAID 5 solution is a nice one. It just seems a little pricey compared to other faster solutions that are available. However, if Apple ever came out with a new RAID 6 card that used the internal 4 ports plus offered two external mini-SAS ports for a total of 12 drives, that would be a product totally worthy of a $1000 premium.
    Happy hunting!

  • Disk Utility RAID of 2 volumes, one drive mistakenly erased. Recoverable?

    Thanks for any help.
    I have a Mac Pro.
    It has 2x 750GB drive formatted in Disk Utility as a RAID volume (striped).
    I erased one of the volumes by mistake.
    I know I can recover the data from the erased drive, but it will be useless without the other drive. So how would I go about restoring the data in such a way that it is recognized as the other half of the RAID volume again?
    Thanks for any help.

    The commercial "SoftRAID" ($149) http://www.softraid.com
    ... is able to convert Apple RAID to its own format, AND has had excellent success for others in recovering in some situations.
    They have excellent support so email them; a demo; and good PDF guides for download are worth a read.

  • Disk utility raid

    I'm planning on doing a concatenated disk set using disk utility for my external drives. But what happens if I had to reinstall os x, does it recognize the raid set? Or will I loose my data?
    Thanks.

    Yes.

  • Disk Utility RAID setup problem

    I just formatted two 5TB drives in order to setup an internal RAID for an Intel Mac Pro (early 2009 OSX 10.10.1). I had no problem installing a RAID on 2TB drives a couple years back using Disk Utility. Now, the RAID option does not even appear for the new disks. I can see the RAID option when choosing the OS disk. The only other hint is Disk Utility says "this type of disk cannot be used as part of a RAID set". I have never seen this error. A disk is a disk (and a horse is a horse of coarse of coarse).
    What do I do to make these drives eligible to be part of a RAID?
    The disks are Seagate ST5000DM000. See image below for lack of RAID option.
    Any and all assistance is greatly appreciated!!

    Thses are normal but innocuous messages resulting from installing ARD and Java updates. If you now have Lion installed then these are left overs from the Snow Leopard system you upgraded. Don't worry about them. They will recur when you run repair permissions.

  • Disk Utility Backup Question

    Hello, I have the latest Mac OS X updates on my Macbook Pro. My question is concerning Disk Utility. I am trying to backup my "home" folder or my entire hard drive as I am worried about losing files if my hard drive fails. I try to create a disk image of my "home" folder and about 10 to 15 percent of the way through, an error comes up saying that "(name of my home folder) cannot be copied" or something to that extent. I am fairly new to Macs, and I'm just wondering what this error is and how can I get around it and be able to back up all my information using Disk Utility, so that I can put it on my external hard drive. Thanks in advance,
    Todd

    Hello,
    If you are trying to make disk image of the hard drive, and creating the disk image on that same hard drive, then that could be your problem.
    You cannot really make an exact copy of something that is constantly changing.
    Since the act of creating the image is also modifying the source, you would end-up going in circles.
    You need to create your image on something else (a different drive).
    That may not work either if the drive is in use while you are trying to make your image.
    So, you could try booting from your original Restore Disk that came with your computer. Then, use the disk utility on that restore DVD to make your disk image.
    But, if you want to go the easy route, consider using a utility like Carbon Copy Cloner.
    http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
    This program can also be used to create a disk image version of your drive. That method would work like what you are trying to do now.
    But, it can also be used to create an exact clone of your main hard drive to an external or second hard drive.
    This would be a bootable backup that can be used to put your entire system back exactly as it was at the time of the backup.
    This means that if something happens, you can boot from your external drive, and resume normal work. Or, you can boot from the external drive and run the program again to restore your computer to match the backup.
    This backup is an exact clone of your entire installation, so it is readable by another machine.
    It works great, and I've never had a problem with it.
    If a full backup is not what you want, you can customize your backup to grab just what you want.
    But, I use the "Clone" feature.
    This has the advantage of being able to restore quickly, and return back to the exact point you were at when you backed-up.
    And, by being able to boot from the backup, you don't have to use another computer or re-install your OS before you can restore. Just boot from the backup and restore.
    I actually have my external hard drive partitioned into two sections.
    One partition is used just for holding my system backup. It is sized to be large enough to hold my entire OS X installation and everything I keep on my system.
    The other partition is the remaining portion of the drive. I use that one to hold large files that I use less frequently.
    This works great because I can just over-write my backup partition for each backup without worrying about my data files (since they are on a separate partition).
    And, it makes things much easier to manage.
    This backup is the most flexible backup method there is.
    You can use it to:
    * Boot if your original hard drive were to fail completely
    * Boot if your original hard drive's OS X installation were corrupted
    * Restore your entire system to the exact state of the system at the time of backup. This means no re-installing and then restoring. Just boot and copy the drive back to your main drive. Nice, fast, and you're done.
    * If you don't need to restore the entire drive, then just grab the files you need.
    * It's readable by any Mac OS computer. No special software required to access it's files.
    Another popular program is SuperDuper:
    http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
    This program has similar capabilities to the one I use. But, they charge for the full version.
    But, if you want to use built-in tools, you can use the Disk Utility built-into Mac OS X. This article describes that and other methods:
    http://homepage.mac.com/geerlingguy/macsupport/mac_help/pages/0016-backuposx.html
    Also, keep in mind that in order to have a bootable backup, you need a FireWire drive or a computer that supports booting from a USB drive (only the new Intel Macs support booting from USB).
    Naturally, if you do make a bootable backup copy, you'll want to make sure and test it before you count on it. So, you should boot the computer from the backup copy, and make sure that it all works as it should. That way you'll know it works when you need it.
    To boot from an external drive or partition, turn on your computer, and press and keep holding the "Option" key until the selection menu appears.
    A menu will appear, and in a few minutes you'll be able to choose the drive / partition you want to boot from and proceed from there.
    I hope this helps.

  • Disk utility/repair question - "keys not in order"

    I connected my 4G iPod to my computer via firewire when the battery was very low yesterday. For the first time, it wouldn't mount and now doesn't show up in system profiler when it is connected via firewire (even in disk mode). It shows up when it is connected via USB.
    It shows up via firewire in disk utility, though. I verified the disk and repaired the disk and got a message "keys not in order". I tried to mount it through disk utility and it still wouldn't show up. I was able to eject it through disk utility though.
    It is charging and playing fine.
    Any ideas on how to fix "keys not in order" or how to do a full restore when it won't mount?
    Thanks for your help.
    iMac G4   Mac OS X (10.2.x)   iTunes 6

    We were able to get it fixed. First, I tried erasing it in disk utility. That just succeeded in getting the file with an exclamation mark and no way to restore it. It also wouldn't turn off at that point.
    We took it to a PC and were able to reformat it on a PC and now it seems to be working at least initially again with my Mac.

  • Disk Utility Format Question

    Burning my first DVD image and cant seem to find too much info on the different formats.
    What should I be using in order to create multiple copies of a DVD Ive made. Compressed? Read Only? Master?
    Thanks for any info or direction as to where I can find some.

    Do the following:
    <font "size=+1">Duplicate a CD or DVD
    1. Insert the DVD/CD;
    2. Open Disk Utility, and select the DVD/CD from the left side list (select the DVD/CD icon on top);
    3. from the DU File menu select New | Disk Image from Disk 1;
    4. Choose to format the disk image as DVD/CD Master, name the disk image and click Save;
    5. When the .cdr file is finished select it with mouse and press COMMAND-I to open the Get Info and check the box to lock the file;
    6. Choose the .cdr file from the left side list, click Burn, and insert a new, blank DVD or CD.

  • Xserve disks and RAID questions

    I have an Intel Xserve with its two original 750 GB disks. These are configured as RAID 1 (mirror).
    I intend to purchase an identical disk as a hot spare and upgrade two old G4s with four each of the same disks as reserve web servers/backup.
    The original disks are Seagate ST3750640NS which I can buy for £140 although the Apple price is £386 including the disk carrier. Apple refuses to sell the disk carriers separately.
    The PCI boards I have found are:
    http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata1v4.html
    and
    http://www.sonnettech.com/product/temposatax4i.html
    costing $120 and $200 respectively.
    There are PC boards as cheap as $20 but these may have bootability and compatibility issues. There appears to be little information about the proportion of hard/soft RAID resulting from any of these boards.
    My questions are:
    1 - Is there an inexpensive way of buying disk carriers for recent Xserves?
    2 - Are there alternative satisfactory PCI boards?
    3 - Do such boards differ much in terms of RAID types supported?
    4 - Do such boards differ much in terms of the degree to which they are host computer independent? - ie more hard than soft and hence, presumably, faster.

    >1 - Is there an inexpensive way of buying disk carriers for recent Xserves?
    I'm not aware of any sources other than Apple (at least that I'd trust).
    >2 - Are there alternative satisfactory PCI boards?
    There are several manufacturers who make PCI RAID cards that you can use. You've listed two, but there are others including the RocketRAID series, and those from ACard.
    >3 - Do such boards differ much in terms of RAID types supported?
    In my opinion, you get what you pay for.
    Cheap cards may support RAID 0 and 1, while more expensive cards may add RAID 5. This may or may not be important for you if you're just mirroring.
    There are going to be performance differences between each card. Since you're using G4's, though, you're going to have other bottlenecks, so disk speed isn't likely to be a big factor.
    >4 - Do such boards differ much in terms of the degree to which they are host computer independent? - ie more hard than soft and hence, presumably, faster.
    If you get a card that works in a Mac, it's likely to also work in other hardware. The same can not necessarily be said the other way around - cheap PC-centric cards may not support Macs, mostly because of driver issues.
    Note that you may also have issues with booting - not all cards can create bootable volumes which may leave you out in the cold if you don't check that first.

  • How do you break a RAID 1 created in Disk Utility and retain data?

    Good Morning all !!
    Quick subject question. 
    Background:  I have 2-3 TB of important data that i use only rarely.  I purchased two 4TB external drives.  I could not use a 2 drive raid enclosure because of the fan noise in the studio.   I selected 800 firewire fanless enclosures.  The technican talked me into using the Disk Utility Raid 1 in Mountain Lion OS.
    Problem:  I only plug them in when needed probably once a week.  The raid rebuilds every time I use the raid.  That takes about a day.  This arrangement is less than ideal.
    Question:  Can I break the raid and still have the data intact on 2 separate drives?  Of coarse I would do it when they a rebuilt.
    Thanks.
    Mike

    Good Morning all !!
    Quick subject question. 
    Background:  I have 2-3 TB of important data that i use only rarely.  I purchased two 4TB external drives.  I could not use a 2 drive raid enclosure because of the fan noise in the studio.   I selected 800 firewire fanless enclosures.  The technican talked me into using the Disk Utility Raid 1 in Mountain Lion OS.
    Problem:  I only plug them in when needed probably once a week.  The raid rebuilds every time I use the raid.  That takes about a day.  This arrangement is less than ideal.
    Question:  Can I break the raid and still have the data intact on 2 separate drives?  Of coarse I would do it when they a rebuilt.
    Thanks.
    Mike

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