G4 Xserve Cloning Mirrored RAID

I manage a Dual G4 Xserve running Server 10.4.9. The server has been running well for about 4 years now and the company is implementing a procedure to replace all HDDs in all servers on a three years cycle. Got them 2 250GB ATA HDDs, cloned the current 160 setup to a FW800 drive, which went flawlessly, was able to boot from the FW drive no problem. Replaced the old drives with the new, cloned from the FW to the new disks in the mirror.
All seems to go perfectly, except when rebooting I get to the gray screen with the spinning hash marks and no further. I have tried resetting the PRAM and resetting the NVRAM. Also booted from the FW drive and ran disk utils against the new setup, found no disk or permission errors.
Anyone have any thought on why this might not be working? Can the G4 take a 250 (not purchased from Apple) drives? Help!

Seen the circumstance that you may have used third party drives (are original Apple drive modules for the G4 still available overall ?), have you taken care that the drives meet the specifications ?
You may check documentation of the drives and the G4, e.g. http://support.apple.com/specs/xserve/Xserve.html
Are the new drives from the same manufacturer as the original ones ? Maybe these are more likely compatible ?

Similar Messages

XServe and Mirrored RAID drives

I wonder if anyone can help me. An XServe of ours went down. It looks like it is the Logicboard. I have taken the system drive out and put it into a G5 machine and the OS opens fine. I took one of the RAID drives which were mirrored and put it into the second slot in the G5. The problem is that the drive did not have any of the files for the last 6 months. Then I removed that drive and put in the other RAID mirrored drive, and this drive had all the files on. I am a bit confused. If the drives were mirrored shouldn't the drives both have the same content on? Also if I change any of the files on that RAID mirrored drive will that affect the way the RAID is set up when I put the drives back in the XServe when my logicboard gets replaced?

Does that mean that RAID mirrored drives don't necessarily have the same files on? What is the point of calling it mirrored then. Also this makes no sense. Because isn't the point that if the one drive fails, you have an exact mirror of the drive to recover your files. How does this help, if a drive fails, and the other mirrored drive is missing files from the last 4 months. Luckily we have external drives connected to the XServe which daily backup the RAID drives on the XServe. But imagine if you didnt have this, and one of the drives failed.
If I had to reformatt the drives and then reinstall the data, would this possibly correct the weird issue with the RAID drives not being exactly mirrored?

Xserve - Mirrored RAID Failed? Degraded? Confused...

Hi,
Can anyone shed some light on this situation please? Disk utility tells me one thing and Server Monitor tells me another.
I have an X-Serve with 3 drives and a Mirrored RAID Set running 10.5.8.
Server Monitor is showing a yellow status for disk 1 and disk 2. Raid Status: Degraded (Mirror) Pre-failure Warning: No Warnings
Disk Utility on the other hand shows that the Mirrored RAID sets are Degraded because disk2s4 = Failed and disk2s2 = Failed.
Running disk utility commands in terminal also show disk2s4 and disk2s2 as Failed.
I have not yet tried to Rebuild or eject / reconnect the disk. The only thing I've really done is some research and rebooted the server.
It sounds like disk 2 has failed. Is there any way to confirm it's dead? Are there any serious risks of trying to rebuild?
Thanks.
- F4st

I'm not sure why you think you're seeing conflicting information…
Server Monitor is showing a yellow status for disk 1 and disk 2. Raid Status: Degraded (Mirror) Pre-failure Warning: No Warnings
OK, So Server Monitor says the RAID is in a degraded state…
Disk Utility […] shows that the Mirrored RAID sets are Degraded because disk2s4 = Failed and disk2s2 = Failed
Running disk utility commands in terminal also show disk2s4 and disk2s2 as Failed
I don't see this is anything different. All three methods are telling you disk2 has failed and your mirror is relying on disk1 for all activity.
Is there any way to confirm it's dead?
Umm.. you mean other than Server Monitor, Disk Utility.app and diskutil?
Face it, it's dead. It's had it.
Are there any serious risks of trying to rebuild?
Sure. If the disk is dead, it's entirely possible that rebuilding the array on that disk will fail. You run the risk of a problem on disk1 and then all your data is gone.
My advice: Replace disk2 as soon as possible. If not sooner.

Re-create a mirrored RAID after restoring backup

As a follow-up on my thread http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=833779&tstart=0 :
On a XServe G5 with OS X Server 10.4.8 and a two-drive mirrored RAID I do backups by cloning the RAID onto an other disk (in bay three) using Intego's Personal Backup X4.
Now it may happen that there is some kind of data loss or an other emergency case that urges me to boot from the cloned HD. I would do this by simply removing the HD in bay one and replacing it with the clone, then restart the server (second HD of the RAID1 remains in bay two).
The information I got until yet says that the mirrored RAID is then broken and needs to be completely re-build. Is this correct so far ? I originally assumed that the clone "remembers" that it was part of a RAID system before and rebuilds automatically with the second HD still in place. Very likely wrong ?
So if I need to rebuild the clone from scratch, which steps do I follow exactly ? As far as I understand I have two choices:
(1)
Via command line (as root): diskutil createRAID mirror <set name> Journaled HFS+ <device identifier disk1> <device identifier disk2>
<set name>: Would be volume name of the RAID to create, right ?
<device identifier disk1/2>: What is this and how to determine ?
(2)
Via disk utility: Select one disk (first line on the left disk/volume list, e.g. "76,2 GB Hitachi 123ABC"), click in "RAID" tab, do settings.
Then drag & drop each harddisk from the left to the right list (again, the first line of each disk entry). Finally creating the RAID by clicking at the button "Generate".
I'm not sure, although I would likely handle this with the disk utility, it appears easier to me using the diskutil command in terminal. But maybe I simply lack of explaining the GUI... let me know how to post images and I will add some screenshots here.
Well, if my proceedings are too complex and there is something easier, please let me know. I'm open for everything.

>This part of my question originally referred to the fact that when booting from the cloned backup in bay one while still having the second disk of the old RAID in bay two, it could occur that the OS rebuilds the RAID by using the data on the remaining mirror disk in bay two, couldn't ? This would be not desired, because the data on that disk would be no longer usable. So just for clarification, not that we have a misunderstanding in this point.
I see what you're getting at, and I don't believe it's an issue.
Given three disks, disk0, disk1 and disk2, where disk0 and disk1 are mirrored and that mirror fails, the OS will not rebuild the mirror using disk1 and any other disk. It won't arbitrarily choose any disk in the system to rebuild on - you have to specifically mark as disk as usable, either by enabling auto-rebuild and adding a spare disk to the array, or by using 'repairMirror' and specifying the disk to use.
In any case, if you reboot the system from disk2, there is no way it will rebuild the array using that disk since that disk is the active boot drive and can not be unmounted (which is necessary before being added to an array).
So, no, there is no chance that the system will auto-rebuild the working half of the mirror with your backup disk.
>Okay, let's summarize... I would follow this procedure in order to boot from the cloned backup and build a new RAID:
1. Remove both disks from the XServe.
2. Insert the cloned backup disk and boot.
3. Open terminal, su root, execute:
diskutil enableRAID disk0
diskutil repairMirror disk0 disk1
This is not correct.
When you 'enableRAID disk0' the OS will create a new, virtual disk (likely 'disk2'). This is the mirror array (currently consisting of only one drive), and it is this virtual disk that you need to specify as the mirror to be repaired.
So, given disk0 and disk1 as being the physical disks in the server, the steps are more likely to be:
<pre class=command>diskutil enableRAID disk0</pre>
(this creates a new, virtual disk2)
<pre class=command>diskutil repairMirror disk2 disk1</pre>
(this adds physical disk1 to the degraded mirror disk2)
When complete disk2 will be a mirror RAID consisting of disk0 and disk1.
>When using "diskutil enableRAID", I cannot determine the label of the RAID as I would do with "diskutil createRAID" (in command line manual this is referred to "setname"). Which setname does my "new" RAID system get, a default one ?
You know, I have no idea
I've never noticed this before. If I think about it, I'd guess that the setname is based on the source disk name.
>> If you add a drive to a RAID it gets reformatted, so it doesn't matter what's
on it.
Even if it was part of the RAID system before (the original disk in bay two) ? It could still have the RAID information on it and try to rebuild RAID when getting mounted, couldn't ?
No. See my comments above. The OS won't auto-rebuild unless a) the RAID is set to auto-rebuild and b) there is a spare disk in the array. If either of those two conditions are not true then the disk acts as a degraded mirror and can be reformatted/reallocated as you like.

Mirrored RAID drive removal.

I have 3 drives in my Xserve G5. 1 is 80GB and running as the system drive. the other 2 are 500GB drives which are both mirrored. I want to sacrifice the data redundancy and gain the extra 500GB for storage. I do not have a location to store the 400+GB of data that is stored on the mirrored RAID while I delete the raid. Is there a way to delete the RAID and then recover the data from one of the 2 drives and then format one of them to be blank? So far from what I am reading deleting a RAID set will make me lose my data I think... I am running the raid through Disk Utility as a software RAID.

Chris
If you delete the RAID1 with disk utility you will lose the data, I can only think of one way to do this-
Pull one of the RAID drives and let the RAID become degraded, data will still be there on one drive
Insert the pulled drive and format with disk utility
Transfer all data from degraded RAID to freshly formatted single drive
Once transferred, delete degraded RAID and format drive to use as extra space
Now doing this without a backup would be very dangerous, and I would suggest that all data should be moved to another drive before doing any of this.
I use software RAID configs all the time and would not recommend that anyone run a server without some form of redundancy, they have saved mine and my client's bacon many times.
Regards
Ed

Mirrored RAID Failed

I have an xserve with three drives. Bay one is a regular single boot volume but bays 2 & 3 are a mirrored RAID pair. I got a flashing yellow light yesterday and ran Disk Utility. It showed the RAID pair as having an error. I ran First Aid and it now reports that the volume is OK but when I look at the RAID panel only one physical disk is listed. The volume still functions ok, the server is working fine and the yellow light is not flashing now - but I guess this means that I do not have a mirrored RAID pair anymore.
How should I go about returning my RAID to a mirrored pair? How can I identify which of the two physical disks has failed? (I don't want to pull out the wrong one!) Can I slot in a new disk and have it added into the RAID as a replacement?

Do you have a backup of that RAID?
If yes I would rebuild the RAID. From what you are saying I would not trust it any more. When you do that then you can test each disk by formating it and then trying to copy data to the drive. You can then see if one is not working right or if they both are fine.

Settinng up a mirrored raid with 2 80 gig HDs

This is my first time setting up an xServe. I know I need to set-up a mirrored raid with my 2 80 gig drives, but I also read that I should not place my other software on the same partition as the OS incase I need to ever perform a clean install. My question is do I need to purchase a 3rd drive module, or can I set-up a partition within the mirrored raid scenario? If so, how do I do this with the Disk Utility?
Dual 2.3GHz PowerPC G5 Mac OS X (10.4) Running Tiger Server

Dan Soderholm-
I don't think partitioning a RAID is bad in some situations as long as you are aware of the pitfalls.
First would be speed. If one partition held data and one held applications, the heads of the drive have to scramble between partitions in order to grab all of the data. This slows things down significantly in practice.
The second major problem is data loss. If something fails, you are losing more than one "drive" and must deal with the associated hassles of rebuilding everything. If you have a robust backup strategy you can mitigate the negative effects of this however.
Your theory bout getting into trouble and wiping the system partition can be another false sense of security. Nine times out of ten when something goes south you will be wiping the entire disk and starting from scratch, and usually after you have spent considerable time just trying to wipe the system partition. It always seems to be the partition information that gets wrecked.
Luck-
-DaddyPaycheck

Second drive in mirrored raid empty????

I have a xserve with two identical drive. They were configured to mirror one another. Some how that is not the case any longer. When I look in disk utility the raid configuration is simply not there and the second drive is empty.
I did not do the initial setup of the raid. I would like to reestablish the mirrored configuration but am scared about my existing data on the main drive.
Can i safely setup the raid mirror configuration without risking the data on drive 1?
Can someone walk me through the steps?
Thank you,
Jeremy

The RAID configuration is not there and the second drive has no data whatsoever.
In passing, the longest I ever had any kind of RAID last was 6 months before everything was lost or messed up royally.
1. I would.
2. Backup first to another drive...
I strongly recommend that you get a good Firewire drive to Clone your Internal drive to ASAP!
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/firewire+drives
Many of those come with Backup SW, or...
Get carbon copy cloner to make an exact copy of your old HD to the New one...
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
SuperDuper...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/
Or the most expensive one & my favorite, Tri-Backup...
http://www.tri-edre.com/english/tribackup.html
Creating the RAID will not format both drives... right?
I haven't tested a Mirror RAID on that, but RAID 0 will wipe the Directories out iirc.

Really Ignore Degraded Mirror RAID ?

Hi, I just became responsible for a studio with a RAID system -- I'm new to this so please bear with me.
Server Monitor shows that 2 drives are degraded. It seems that these are slices of a Type 1 (Mirror) RAID set. The symptoms match the following linked document exactly (which says Server Monitor may erroneously report degraded status of Journaled drive, and you can ignore if Disk Utility says it's OK):
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107406
However, I can't say for sure that Disk Utility is giving me a green light on this RAID set. Disk Utility (the GUI application) says the RAID set and the slices are degraded. But Disk Verify comes through fine. Also "diskutil checkRAID" says that Status is Degraded but that both disks in set are "OK".
So do I worry about this or not?
Any and All Help Much APPRECIATED!

I have seen this issue on a couple of Xserve's
This is how I went about fixing-
Get someone in front of Xserve
Identify which one the 2 drives is NOT working IE- no blue activity light
Pull that drive and break RAID
Insert drive
Rebuild mirror, see this article for info-
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106987
There is a way to rebuild the mirror in Disk Utility, I cannot find any info from Apple on this but i have used a few times.
On one Xserve I have done this at least 3 times, I have completely rebuilt the RAID and re-installed the OS and it still does it occasionally.
Ed

Rebuilding a Mirrored Raid using Disk Utility

I have a mirrored raid set up via disk utility. For some reason one drive was switched off recently so the 2 drives are now out of sync. Disk utility now says the raid is 'Degraded' with one of the slices marked as 'failed'
I can ignore this as the drive appears fine on the desktop. But I need it to be working correctly as a fully operating RAID.
If I click 'rebuild' it gives a warning saying 'Rebuilding a RAID set will destroy all information on the replacement disk “RAID Slice”.
SO- I'm assuming rebuild will correct the error and make it work but I'm concerned about this warning about destroying data! I assume it will simply copy everything from Drive A to the 'degraded' Drive B??
Thanks for any suggestions.

"SO- I'm assuming rebuild will correct the error and make it work but I'm concerned about this warning about destroying data! I assume it will simply copy everything from Drive A to the 'degraded' Drive B??"
This should indeed be the way it goes but since i do not have enough experience with that kind or RAID setup i strongly suggest backing up / cloning drive A to an external before doing the rebuild... just in case.

My mirrored RAID config shows degraded

My simple mirror RAID set is noted as degraded in Disk Utility, and one of the drives is doing frequent drive arm recalibrations. This drive set contains all my iTunes and iPhoto files. Time to replace a drive or two?
I'll copy the data to my desktop drive but then what?
- How do I diagnose which drive is the bad one?
- How do I know that in fact there is a bad one? Hard error or correctable soft error?
- How do I integrate a replacement drive in the set?
RAID Utility 1.0 and SoftRAID do not seem to apply to 10.3.9.
Searched the knowledgebase but no joy.
Any and all help w/b appreciated.
Regards, Mike

Well, I've tried just about every combination of Terminal/diskUtil(TR), Disk Utility(DU), reboot, and mount/re-mount that I can think of.
But it always comes to this:
1 - after the mirror is apparently rebuilt (before reboot) - DU reports both drives as degraded and TR checkmirror reports both OK. (Next, Pick 2, 3, or 4 for next step
2 - then rebooting OS X, TR checkmirror reports slice 0 as OK and slice 1 0%, and DU immediately starts rebuilding disk1s3 (disk 1 slice 3 - see how drive formatting breaks down from TR list). wash, rinse, repeat - see 1 (Oddly TR checkmirror shows both disks OK shortly after rebuild begins but well before completion.)
3 - After reboot and starting DU, it starts rebuilding immediately with no chance to cancel, I initially forced DU to stop by turning off the bad drive (it crashed actually with no disk error msg). Restarting DU and selecting the bad drive before the mirror (good half) mounted allowed me to reinitialize the bad drive. Then, selecting the mounted mirror and dragging the re-inited drive to the RAID box, I was able to select rebiuld and try it again. (Note - in the raid box after dragging the initialized drive, the good drive's status was "Forming" - I have no idea whether this was good or bad.) wash, rinse, repeat - see 1.
4 - After rebooting and skipping DU, using TR repairmirror gave same results (again TR checkraid noted both drives OK before completion). I eventually learned to wait until the drive busy lights (red glow surrounding the power on lite when writing) stopped - a couple of more hours. wash, rinse, repeat - see 1.
At this point I'm out of ideas/procedures. I guess the next step is to try to delete the mirror set, re-init both drives (to zeros), remirror them, and copy backup folders to the mirror.
Some notes for Mac developers in case they peruse this forum:
1. Please provide a desktop message when the mirror mounts if the mirror is degraded or when it goes bad during operations. Also report which drive(s) is(are) the culprit(s).
2. Provide the serial numbers in the diskutil list output. Also provide which disks are participating in the mirror as well as their status.
3. Provide better documentation of terms and processes. For example, to stop forcing a DU crash, I figured out that if I turned off the good mirror drive so it wouldn't mount, the bad drive would mount (dimmed) but could then be selected for re-inititlization.
4. Provide a cancel button on DU rebuilding progress box and include a time remaining bar.
This is pretty basic stuff. If Xserve is to go big time, RAID needs to be more robust in operation, and much more friendly to repair.
I have no idea how long I was operating with my data unprotected.
Any and all ideas welcome.
Thanks, Mike

How to recover data from failed drive that's part of mirrored raid

Hi Guys,
hope to get help from someone knowledgeable out there. I have a macpro and recently experienced a failed drive. I set up that failed drive as part of a mirrored raid, this set is not my primary drive and so my computer is stilling up and running but now am wondering how I access the data from the mirrored drive. Should the mirrored drive automatically mount on my desktop whereby I would be able to access the files? This is my first drive failure and I was under the impression having a mirror would duplicate my data and allow me to access it in situations like this. I'm a bit of novice in this area and not sure if the data is truly on the "mirror" or if there are things I need to do.
I launched disk utility and was able to see the mirrored drive and I selected "mount" drive but it would not mount; I then selected "verify" and got "unrecognizeable filesystem" Is this normal? Am I suppose do something to get access to the mirrored drive? Do I install a new drive in place of the failed drive and expect the raid to rebuild automatically whereby I then see the data?
Your help is much appreciated.

Even with a mirror, you still need a backup.
Along with Disk Utility, you still need 3rd party (TechTool Pro 5, Disk Warrior 4.1.1+).
And if you like to use RAID and esp mirror RAID, consider
http://www.softraid.com which is a step above (the pdf guide, manual you can download and they have a demo, so worth the read). SoftRAID can also import/convert an Apple RAID to its own format which has been known to recover drives and data.

How do I add a new drive to a degraded MIRRORED RAID set?

My mirrored raid said it was degraded because one of the drives had a failure.
Today I unplugged the faulty drive and inserted a new one.
So far so good.
I erased the new drive.
Then I went into disk utility and followed the instructions in the help about RAID but I cannot see how to add this new drive to the RAID.
I'm confused.
1) The data is all on the RAID (the good, original slice) so can I add a new slice?
2) how do I do it?
Many thanks

I don't recommend the Apple hardware RAID card, and it doesn't work with off the shelf drives. If you are using drives in RAID, first make sure they are RAID Edition or lacking that Enterprise. Same make/model/firmware.
If using Seagate, avoid anything prior to 7200.12 series. If WD the RE2/3 series.
Rebuilds are slow, and one reason why I recommend 3 drives, even if you lose one you are covered still.
Of course just having two backups per volume is more important and comes first; mirrors are great for live editing and recording (audio) but otherwise... I'd stick to stripe and redundant backups. Only if you need 24/7. Otherwise, forget mirror.

Recovering data from a damaged mirrored RAID

I have a puzzle I'm hoping you can help me with: I have a mirrored RAID array in a MD G4 which is not mounting (since going to Apple for replacing the logic board).
I have tried connecting both drives to a Forensic FireWire dock to no avail; they show up as "spare" and not as a "slice".
Any suggestions?
Yours truly,
-Tom
FYI - Below are the results of "diskutil checkRAID" and "diskutil list" on this G4:
#diskutil checkRAID
RAID SETS
Name: Stuff
Unique ID: 58607662-4550-11D8-84ED-000393D28706
Type: Mirror
Status: Offline
Device Node: disk4
Apple RAID Version: 1
# Device Node UUID Status
1 disk1s4 AF8C5D0C-24F3-4EA3-A123-5F5E22FA6D65 Spare
0 disk2s3 027E86C9-88CE-4973-9984-C7A010C422FF Spare
2 Unknown Missing/Damaged
2 Unknown Missing/Damaged
#diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: type name size identifier
0: Applepartitionscheme *114.5 GB disk0
1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 KB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Backup 114.5 GB disk0s2
/dev/disk1
#: type name size identifier
0: Applepartitionscheme *149.1 GB disk1
1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 KB disk1s1
2: Apple_Boot 128.0 MB disk1s3
3: Apple_RAID 148.9 GB disk1s4
/dev/disk2
#: type name size identifier
0: Applepartitionscheme *149.1 GB disk2
1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 KB disk2s1
2: AppleDriverOpenFirmware 512.0 KB disk2s2
3: AppleBootRAID 149.1 GB disk2s3
/dev/disk3
#: type name size identifier
0: Applepartitionscheme *74.5 GB disk3
1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 KB disk3s1
2: Apple_Driver43 28.0 KB disk3s2
3: Apple_Driver43 28.0 KB disk3s3
4: AppleDriverATA 28.0 KB disk3s4
5: AppleDriverATA 28.0 KB disk3s5
6: Apple_FWDriver 256.0 KB disk3s6
7: AppleDriverIOKit 256.0 KB disk3s7
8: Apple_Patches 256.0 KB disk3s8
9: Apple_HFS Laura 74.5 GB disk3s9
/dev/disk4
#: type name size identifier
0: *0.0 B disk4

Razorlance wrote:
Is it possible to just put the old SSD in the new laptop then?
Maybe, I just cannot say with authority. Even if they were physically the same, the question is what OSX is on the older SSD. If it is older than the one the new MBP came with, it will not work.
Ciao.

Creating a mirrored raid set with a hard drive that already has data on it.

I have a hard drive that I keep my photos on, and want to create a mirrored raid set that includes this drive, with its data, and another drive. How can I do this without erasing the drive with my photos on them? I am running 10.7.5 if that matters.
Thanks for any help.

Creating a Mirrored RAID reformats the drive and loads a substantial RAID driver and some tables onto it. When completed, the drive is inherently a member of a RAID set, and will continue to be so even if moved to another Mac.
because of this, you cannot create a RAID directly on a standard drive that contains data already in any reasonable, risk-free way.
To amplify what The Hatter has said above, Mirrored RAID is not Backup. Mirrored RAID only increases mean time to repair to keep a drive failure from becoming a Data Disaster. You still need a Backup. Mirrored RAID does not protect you from deletions from user error, crazy software, or "just because".
I run a mirrored RAID in my Home Server, which contains all the Users files for everyone in the Household. And I also recognize (after being burned by it) that Mirrored RAID is helpful, but not a sufficient Backup by itself. I back up the Users Drive automatically to an External drive using Time Machine. [So what I am advising is not just theoretical, I am living what I am advising.]
With WD Black 1TB and other very good drives in the under US$100 range, there is really no reason NOT to invest in several drives for such an undertaking.

G4 Xserve Cloning Mirrored RAID

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