Hard Drive To Raid

Does it matter which hard drives one puts together in a raid pair? In other words am I going to get the same performance, using Mac's software raid, if I mirror drives 1 and 4 as I would if I mirror drives 1 and 2? I assume it mostly depends on how the bits travel over the connecting bus.

Thanks. I also just found a nice write-up on SATA in wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA) . Given it is a hub and spoke architecture rather than a bus (SCSI), it won't matter.
Message was edited by: OctoberBoy

Similar Messages

How do I remove one failing hard drive from raid set and replace with new one

Last Friday apparently one of my raid drives started failing.
As I mentioned on this forum I started getting continous beeping.
I was finally able to get the raid working at a degraded level. I ordered a replacement hard drive which is arriving today.
(In the meantime I made twice daily backups of my work.....)
Below was the message I got from the browser based raid software:
Blahblah 09    1000.2GB   RaidSet Member SamSung HD103SJ
Blahblah 10    1000.2GB     Free                 SamSung HD103SJ
Blahblah 11    1000.2GB   RaidSet Member SamSung HD103SJ
Blahblah 12    1000.2GB   RaidSet Member SamSung HD103SJ
(See this earlier thread if you wish!)
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/727867?tstart=0
At one point when I did the checked the browser interface I saw the message Failed and Degraded
As I said, I was able to work over the weekend on the degraded system.
This morning I got the beeping again and did the rescue and now I am running a "full raid" without the notice that one raid was "Free".
In any case, the new hard drive is arriving today.
What steps should I take to incorporate the new drive into the raid system.
I have one OS drive
and 4 tb raid drives.   One needs to be replaced with the new one that I am getting today.
Thanks
Rowby

Harm,
Regarding your comment:
Re: How do I remove one failing hard drive from raid set and replace with new one
Please tell me how to read the serial number from an individual drive rather easily, without un-installing them:
If you select the proper drive to change out, you only need to remove one drive and look at its serial number...
Step 1: Identify bad drive serial number using Areca's tools
Step 2: Turn off the computer
Step 3: Remove what you think is the bad drive based on following your numbered cable method, marked hot-swap bays, whatever
Step 4: Verify that the serial number matches the "bad drive" serial number from step 1; if it does great, proceed; if it does not match, go back to step 3
Step 5: Change out the CORRECT drive - that's the bottom line for this whole procedure
Cheers,
Jim

Extrenal Hard Drive with Raid 1 option won't mount through Airport Extreme

I just purchased the new Airport Extreme and the Iomega UltraMax Desktop Hard drive, 1TB. The hard drive has Raid options. I plugged the hard drive into the back of the Airport Extreme through USB and if I have the hard drive set up to be Mirrored (Raid 1), the hard drive will not show up on my desktop.
I switched the hard drive back to Striped (Raid 0) and it shows up. However, if I open the Airport Utility, the hard drive doesn't show up there. I also can't see the drive by going into the disk utility either so I can format the drive before using it.
Any idea why this doesn't work as Raid 1 through the Airport Extreme and then I'm puzzled with why it doesn't show up in the Airport Utility nor in the Disk Utility.
I want to be able to access this hard drive with a laptop eventually and I also want to make sure that I protect my data by using the Raid 1 option.
Can anyone please help me figure out these issues?

Sure. Forget about the AirDisk and buy one of these:
http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=509 - It's a D-Link DNS-323 2 drive bay SATA NAS box, and shouldn't cost you more than $185 without drives. It has Gigabit Ethernet, supports SMB and AFP (it'll work with Windows machines and Macs), and it even runs an iTunes server inside the box.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/32vfc3 - Maxtor 500GB drives for $100 each shipped.
So for ~$385, you can have 1TB of space which you can then array as RAID 0 or 1, or use as a big, contiguous drive.

Working photographer needs help with hard drives and raid O decisions

Hi new here and also new to Mac well almost new been 20 years since i had a mac. i have a Mac Pro Book and this led to ordering the MacPro since I am a working photographer i made a complete switch in platforms so i have some questions and such but I did place a order on Friday for a 2.66 4gbs of Ram , 2 500 gb hard drive and a 30 in monitor and of course the ATI 1900 XT card so yes i am waiting like many for that card.
I put initial 4gb of ram since running CS2 will at least take a max of 3gb's in the memory cache . i plan on getting 2gbs more from OWC since that seems to be the only 3rd party ram at the moment that is working correctly from reading some of the threads here. Having 6gbs is a no brainer really given the amount of Raw processing that i do along with PS work plus having e-mail and other apps open at the same time. The ram to me is the easy part although expensive . My biggest issue is what to do with the 2 hard drive slots and Raid O or not but I will start a thread on that. But i will have 6gbs total for now and the bottom line is you can never have enough ram still holds true.
Now on to my diliemma with hard drives. I did have a raid O scsi 10k rapture and and 10 k scratch on my Dell box and I am just not sure what to do here. i ordered the 2 500 gb hard drive and I may just put them on the storage side of things than get 2 WD 150gb 10 k Sata drives. Now i could Raid O them for 300 gb and get a performace boast that way or i could keep them seperate and put everything on 1 150 drive and ue the second for scratch only. What i don't know is what Mac perfers and what works better. Not worried so much about failure of drives, thats just life in the big city stuff and you just have backups. What i more worried about is performance versus a waste . seems to me that Raid O may not even be needed with these new Intel boxes with all the horsepower going on. Now the other think I notice is the WD 150gb 10 k drives are 1.5 and not 3.0 so is it really faster than the 7200 3.0 single hard drives. I read barefeats shoot out and it seems just getting the right drives in 7200 and Raid O them maybe the answer.
Okay i am not the biggest geek on the planet but I do know my stuff but this is a area that i look for more knowledge on this. So if i can get some sound advice in this area. i know there are many photographers out there like me pushing hundreds of images that could use the same advice. Now let's leave the money end out , folks sometimes think more with there wallet than what works best not that I am opposed to saving money but after spending over 7 k already on this system it becomes a moot point. LOL
www.guymancusophoto.com

Ok your question is if you should RAID O the two 150GB Raptors or not.
I think it was wise for you to get a couple of them for a boot drive with "Time Machine" coming in the next version of Mac OS X. The second drive would make a excellent bootable backup and eliminating downtime if a boot drive dies on you one morning.
In fact any boot drive cloning software that is Mac Intel ready now would do you good.
Now Barefeats has run some tests, and I can pretty much back up what they say from my own experience.
Mac OS X and apps can be helped only so much by a faster boot drive, and a single 10,000 RPM Raptor is enough, RAID O a pair is overkill.
If you install everything on the boot Raptor and keep your space hogging files (except iTunes) in new folders on another drive, even a 7,200 RPM 500GB, the two drives combined is faster as there is nearly no wait. Both drives can be accessed at the same time. Keeping the boot drive slim keeps the stylus (arm) moving as little as possible to get all the small reads/writes Mac OS X needs.
I RAID O-ed my boot drives because 74GB was the largest they had at the time, so combining them gave me speed and larger storage. I hardly use the speed, it only comes in handy if by rare chance I duplicate a 20GB folder, then I can do it in half the time of a 7,200 RPM drive.
Some of the drawbacks of a RAID O set, especially as a boot drive is that I have to auto-clone the whole set to a external drive regularly (I actually do a couple). Since the data path is separated with a RAID O, any drive failure results in total data loss.
So if you RAID O those 150GB Raptors, your going to have to clone 300GB to a external drive (or another internal) regularly, like once a week. This will take considerable time and you can't use the machine while the cloning process is going on. Sure auto-cloning software like DeJaVu can be used at night/weekends, but why bother cloning more than you have to for no big speed increase?
However if your messing with huge Photoshop files that spill over your CS2 3GB RAM limit (you need to have a "scratch" thats as fast as RAM), duplicating large files and other heavy duty drive work, then a boot RAID O will come in handy. Just remember your initial performance of 185 MB p/s will drop about 20-25% when those drives are 3/4 filled. Still 140 MB p/s is extremely good and a no worry situation.
What is worrysome is anything below 80MB p/s (I'm talking uncached 4K write speeds under X-Bench) with a new boot drive and then as time elaspes that boot drive gets filled up and loses half or more of it's inital speed. 30 MB p/s is really slow. Beachball H&LL.
http://www.barefeats.com/hard33b.html
Do Erase W/Zero in Disk Utility all new drives before laying data on them. Drives get subjected to shock which causes bad sectors on the drive. Driver software uses your data as a guinea pig to test the sectors (which you might not be able to recover the file). Zeroing does this without your data, rewriting the bad sector map so your writes are much improved, OS is more stable. etc.

Clone hard drive then raid two SSD's

Asking advice on how to re-install my current hard drive info after I RAID my two SSD drives on my 2011 (Early) Macbook Pro. I know how to do the RAID but need to know how do I get all my current hard drive contents back on the RAID'd drive. Do not want to have to re-install all my Apps

It is simple to clone your hard drive to the SSD RAID:
Clone Lion/Mountain Lion using Restore Option of Disk Utility
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
     1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu then press the Continue
         button.
     2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
     3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
     4. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it
         to the Destination entry field.
     5. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to
         the Source entry field.
     6. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the SSD RAID drive. Source means the internal startup drive.

Best hard drive for raid.

Hey,
I know this question may be posted quite frequently, but I can't seem to find a definitive answer.
I plan on getting one 500gb hd from mac when I buy my pro ( I will use this drive as my boot drive). Then buy three aditional 500gb hard dirves from other world computing. These three hard dirves will all be striped in a RAID 0. Until this point I planned on purchasing three maxtor maxline 500's. But I am not completely sure this will be best for my set up.
* I plan on using this computer for digital media content, ie. Shake, After Effects, Final Cut Pro, and Color. I also want to eventually be importing and editing HD footage.
So, whats the best hard drive I can buy three of to stripe together in a RAID 0 in my Mac Pro?
Thank you in advance for your help.
powerbook Mac OS X (10.4.10) getting mac pro

You'll get get different people giving you different responses based in their personal preferences. Ultimately though, there are realistically only 3 main contenders when it comes to the 500GB drive which are…
- Maxtor MaXLine
- Seagate Barracuda ES
- Western Digital RE2
The Maxtor is an extremely proficient all-round drive but does tend to run a little hot. Uncomfortably hot for some though I've found that my MaXLine IIIs, which run at similar temperatures to be just fine. One big downside to this drive is that Maxtor/Seagate no longer manufacture this drive. These drives are the small file access kings in my opinion which makes them fantastic boot/small file scratch drives like for Photoshop.
The Seagate drives really suck at small file, fast access performance so that make really poor boot/general use drives. However, they excel at large file sustained transfers which should help with your video editing.
Finally The Western Digital drives are the queitest and coolest of the bunch. Again they're a good all-round performer and are the favourite of many. Having the least experience with these I can't say too much of their performance.

SATA Hard Drives wit Raid

I need some help on setting up my two SATA maxtor hard drives on my MSI K7N2 Delta ILSR mother board. When I start setup and run XP install it tells me that I don't have any hard drives. HELP

Thanks to all of you. I did more investigating on this subject by surfing the net, just got some more knowledge. I waited a few days and tried it again and it worked this time. I set up Raid 0 after I installed my OS then I installed the SP2 disk that I got from Microsoft. Every thing is working right so far. The only problem that I have is my Scanner (HP ScanJet 5200C). The scanner is not compatible with SP2. It just freezes everything up, so I just turn it off untill I need it. This work for right now. As for Blazer.
I have a MSI K7N2 DELTA-ILSR Socket A ATX DDR400 motherboard,
OS XP Home Ed with (SP2 now),
2 Maxtor 120 DiamandMax Plus9 Serial ATA9SATA/150 9ms 7200rpm 8MB Buffer internal HD,
RAM 2 Kingston 512MB 333MHz DDR PC2700 DIMM CL2.5
BENQ 16X DVD-ROM Drive IDE (which I can't install my OS with)leaves out files(DLL),
SONY DVDRW IDE DVD+R,DVD+RWMSI FX5200 128MB Video card,
and a Floppy A Drive can't remember what it is.
Plus I have all the updates for everything.
THANKS AGAIN

Slow Boot after added hard drives in RAID 0

Hi,
My Mac Pro used to boot very fast (from Bong to Login screen).
After installing a RAID0, it takes much longer to boot (x5).
When powering on, after the BONG, the grey screen appears and it seems frozen for a while ~30seconds. While grey screen is still on, I can hear the RAID0 hard drives finally waking up and starting to spin (I believe that they are the RAID0 hard drives because I can hear the startup disk just after the BONG). Once the MacOSX splash screen is displayed, everything goes very fast. Progress bar takes <2s to finally display login screen.
I suspect an incompatibility of the hard drives firmware with the Mac Pro even if those are very popular drives.
The Mac Pro is also sometime very slow to shutdown and when it occurs, I can hear the same sound of the drives waking up and starting to spin again.
I have disabled the hard drive sleep option in the power settings.
Here is my configuration. Disk4 has been added after the RAID0 and hasn't changed the issue. Please help.
Disk1: (Startup Disk)
Capacity: 149.05 GB
Model: ST3160812AS P
Revision: 3.BQH
Disk2: RAID0 - slice1
Capacity: 298.09 GB
Model: ST3320620AS
Revision: 3.AAJ
Disk3: RAID0 - slice2
Capacity: 298.09 GB
Model: ST3320620AS
Revision: 3.AAJ
Disk4:
Capacity: 698.64 GB
Model: ST3750640AS
Revision: 3.AAE
Regards,
Guillaume

I am still booting off of the same drive as before I added the RAID so RAID disk doesn't appear in disk control panel but I went there and reselected my initial MacOSX installation folder on Drive0. It seems to have improved things quite a bit. Was it just looking for other boot partitions on all hard drives on startup? I don't know why this setting would have changed when adding drives into the box.
Thanks.

Formatting a Hard Drive for RAID 5

Hey everyone,
I'm a bit new to RAID formatting. I understand how it works, but I want to make sure I'm formatting correctly.
We are looking to format a 12TB drive for RAID 5 for optimal space, speed and safety.
In Disk Utility, I am selecting 5 partitions, but how to I format EACH partition? Should they all be Mac OS Extended (Journaled)?
The manual that came with my drive (OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2) wasn't much of a help. Maybe you are!
Thanks in advance

By the way, we are attempting to format RAID 5 to 4 disks.

After upgrade of hard drives in RAID, XSAN Admin sees wrong lun sizes?

So I purchased new 750GB drives for our XS RAIDS and I upgraded firmware to 1.5.1 C on RAIDS, but XSAN Admin sees wrong lun sizes. I have tried running XSAN 1.4.2 and even uninstalled on MDC and reinstalled back to 1.4.1 still no luck. Weird thing is that when I uninstall XSAN and then reinstall XSAN the lun names are still there in XSAN Admin, it is like they are stored in a file that does not get uninstalled when I uninstall XSAN.
I even upgraded the Firmware on the RAIDS again after the install of the new drives, the only drives that did not get upgraded were the 2 x 250GB set for Metadata Info on the first Raid Controller. I am running this on XSERVE non intel with OS X Server 10.4.11. I did not uninstall XSAN off any of the clients only the backup MDC.
I hope this info helps cause I could really use some tips from all you masters.
Thanks in advance
Jesse

Ok so I am a dumb *. All I had to do to fix my issue was delete the actual names of the Luns in XSAN Admin and hit enter and it updated the Lun sizes. Thanks everyone.

Best Way to Backup a Raid hard drive on Windows 7 Pro OS

This is my set-up
Lenovo W520 on factory installed Windows 7 Professional OS
Two 500 GB Internal Hard drive on Raid 1 (factory installed):
NO DVD burner
Have a 2TB External Hard drive partitioned into three -
#1--600GB; #2-- 600GB;    #3--600+GB
I already created a "Factory recovery disk" from the thinkvantage tool and put it in partition #1
The next step is to create a backup of my system, application and data.
Thinkvantage tools offers 2 options:
1. Windows backup
2. Rescue & Recovery
Question 1:
With the set-up as listed above, what is the best & most effective way to backup a Raid 1 on Windows 7 Pro OS?
How do you do it? How often to backup? (I am just a beginner on RAID)
Question 2:
OR do you use other Back-up/ Imaging software??? (e.g. Acronis,paragon system backup,norton ghost , novabackup, nero backit up)

Hi, Herb,
   RAID is no substitute for backing up your hard drive. For example, if you get a virus it will destroy the data on both RAID drives. In fact, I don't think that RAID 1 has much value for most users. Odds are much higher that you will encounter a software (virus) issue than a sudden disk failure. However, if RAID makes you feel more secure, then by all means.
   I recommend getting Acronis True Image Home. It is cheap and it works. It will enable you to take a snapshot of your hard drive and recover with ease.
Acronis
   Last thing - I'm guessing your external drive is USB 3 or eSATA? If so, it has the speed you need to run complete backups. I do mine every evening, as I can't afford to lose a whole day's work.
                                                        Best, ZZ
P.S. I recommend rotating multiple external drives. I use three and keep one in my car. Yes, external drives can fail/ be stolen, etc.

USB 3.0 External Hard Drives & RAID

Hi,
I've recently ordered the new rMBP with USB 3.0 so I want to buy a new external HD to take advantage of it (I do a lot of video editing).
I was wondering if it is possible to buy two USB 3.0 2TB Hard Drives and RAID them together? Or do you have to buy a special RAID Drive to use RAID?
Thanks,
Gulliver
p.s. I wanted to do RAID1 (mirrored RAID).

Thanks for the advice.
This seems like a cheapish option: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B006TADRD2
Although, it dosen't say it supports USB 3.0 and I can't find a RAID setup that does?
Thanks

The internal hard drive on my early 2009 24" iMac is nearly full. How do I add an external drive so that it functions just like the internal drive on the iMac?

The internal hard drive on my early 2009 24" iMac is nearly full. I have already worked to free as much space on the HD as possible. How do I add an external HD and have the iMac read it as though it was part of the internal HD. I know about external HD for additional storage and I do have an external HD, but, it is so much easier to search the drive when it is internal than having to perform a search on the internal drive and then a search on the external drives. And, it is easier to save files to an internal drive so that I don't have to decide which external drive to use to save files. In other words, I want to add an external HD and have it function as though I had purchased a larger internal HD.

That is simply not possible. Every drive is a separate device. It cannot be used to extend an internal drive as though you had a seamlessly larger drive.
What you can do is to create a striped RAID array using the internal drive and an external drive. However, doing this will erase the internal drive and you will lose everything on the internal drive. Furthermore, installing Lion or Mountain Lion becomes a bit of a problem because you cannot create a Recovery HD on a RAID and this tends to make the installer choke. However, you can clone an existing Lion or Mountain Lion system to the RAID and designate the RAID as a startup volume.
I would not recommend the RAID solution, personally, but there are many who do. I prefer the basic solution of spending the money on a larger internal hard drive instead of an external hard drive.
RAID Basics
For basic definitions and discussion of what a RAID is and the different types of RAIDs see RAIDs. Additional discussions plus advantages and disadvantages of RAIDs and different RAID arrays see:
RAID Tutorial;
RAID Array and Server: Hardware and Service Comparison.
Hardware or Software RAID?
RAID Hardware Vs RAID Software - What is your best option?
RAID is a method of combining multiple disk drives into a single entity in order to improve the overall performance and reliability of your system. The different options for combining the disks are referred to as RAID levels. There are several different levels of RAID available depending on the needs of your system. One of the options available to you is whether you should use a Hardware RAID solution or a Software RAID solution.
RAID Hardware is always a disk controller to which you can cable up the disk drives. RAID Software is a set of kernel modules coupled together with management utilities that implement RAID in Software and require no additional hardware.
Pros and cons. Software RAID is more flexible than Hardware RAID. Software RAID is also considerably less expensive. On the other hand, a Software RAID system requires more CPU cycles and power to run well than a comparable Hardware RAID System. Also, because Software RAID operates on a partition by partition basis where a number of individual disk partitions are grouped together as opposed to Hardware RAID systems which generally group together entire disk drives, Software RAID tends be slightly more complicated to run. This is because it has more available configurations and options. An added benefit to the slightly more expensive Hardware RAID solution is that many Hardware RAID systems incorporate features that are specialized for optimizing the performance of your system.
For more detailed information on the differences between Software RAID and Hardware RAID you may want to read: Hardware RAID vs. Software RAID: Which Implementation is Best for my Application?

Help with using multiple hard drives

Is there a way to install the OS on an "external" (expresscard SSD) drive, but have all of the library and data files on the primary hard disk? I LOVE the speed on my SSD, but it's a pain finding stuff now. Is this something a RAID configuration could help with?

mwmmartin wrote:
I have a 1 TB hard drive; but I have a 500GB and 250GB usb external hard drives.
Wouldn't it be cool if I could make the two external hard drives a RAID drive and use Time Machine to use all the 750GB of external memory to do my backups???
You can, but I would +*strongly recommend against+* it. See +Concatenated RAID+ in the Help for Disk Utility.
There are several potential problems:
Depending on how much data is on your 1 TB drive, 750 GB may not be enough to back it up. See #1 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
To set up a +Concatenated RAID+ set, both drives will be erased.
When (not if) either drive fails, you'll lose all the data on both.
Both drives must be connected any time you do a backup or want to browse your backups.
Especially with USB, if one drive wakes from sleep, or spins up, quickly enough, but the other one doesn't, the backup may fail and/or your backups may be corrupted.
For now, it looks like my only solution is to go buy a bigger external hard drive and spend more money,,,
That's your best solution +*by far.+* Anything else is taking a large risk with your backups.

Wiki: Using multiple hard drives, LVM & encryption

I have lately found myself with the issue of having multiple hard drives and wanting to do LVM stuff & encryption with while retaining maximum flexibility. After scanning through wikis, manpages and forum entries I came up with a solution for myself. The only thing I don't cover with it is mounting while booting as I don't need and can't test it.
I want to share the knowledge I gained and help other people find a solution faster and so I wrote a Wiki entry (first on my user page). I would now like to hear the opinion of the community regarding the following questions:
Do you see any security risks with my solution (especially the part on storing the unencrypted keyfile on a ramdisk)?
Do you think this text is worthy for a wiki entry or should I keep it in the forums?
Do you spot any errors (typing or else)?
Would you improve this article anywhere?
Of course, if you have further comments, I would like to here them as well. And now without further ado: Using multiple hard drives, LVM & encryption.
Regards,
javex
P.S.: As a small side question: Is my user page a good playground for article creation or would you recommend some other area where to do this (since here noone else could improve the article while in this early stage)?

mwmmartin wrote:
I have a 1 TB hard drive; but I have a 500GB and 250GB usb external hard drives.
Wouldn't it be cool if I could make the two external hard drives a RAID drive and use Time Machine to use all the 750GB of external memory to do my backups???
You can, but I would +*strongly recommend against+* it. See +Concatenated RAID+ in the Help for Disk Utility.
There are several potential problems:
Depending on how much data is on your 1 TB drive, 750 GB may not be enough to back it up. See #1 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
To set up a +Concatenated RAID+ set, both drives will be erased.
When (not if) either drive fails, you'll lose all the data on both.
Both drives must be connected any time you do a backup or want to browse your backups.
Especially with USB, if one drive wakes from sleep, or spins up, quickly enough, but the other one doesn't, the backup may fail and/or your backups may be corrupted.
For now, it looks like my only solution is to go buy a bigger external hard drive and spend more money,,,
That's your best solution +*by far.+* Anything else is taking a large risk with your backups.

Hard Drive To Raid

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