Increasing Size of Mirrored RAID

Hi All,
I had a mirrored RAID set up with 2 500GB, and one by one rebuilt that with 2 1TB disks, but Finder and Disk Utility still report the logical drive as only 500GB. How can I get the system to recognize the extra space?
Bartram

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Maximum drive size for mirrored RAID

I'm want to set up a mirrored RAID with two 4TB drives that I have. When I put the drives in the tower (Mac Pro, OS 10.8.5) and open Disk Utility, the RAID button at the top does not show up for these drives. I only see First Aid, Erase, and Restore. Is there a max size for a drive that I'm exceeding? Or is it something else?

Hi - from the research I have done, there is a BUG in the OS. A solution is to boot with an older version of OS X and format the drive with the version of disk utlity on the older OS, or yank out the drive and put it in one of those 'drive toaster' type devices and format it EXTERNALLY. The problem seems to be localized when it's formatted with the drive INSIDE the MacPro.
You would figure that this would be a high priority fix, but NO. I went nuts for a few days trying to figure out WHY I could not see the RAID tab.
There is also third party software that has a more robust RAID solution. I have NOT tried it yet, but you should check it out.
http://www.softraid.com/
Alfred
PS: If you've resolved this problem, do share your findings here too!

Upgrade hard drive size with mirrored RAID

First of all thanks for your help.
I have a G5 XServe with (3) 250GB Drives
(1) drive is for the OS .... great perfect no change needed.
The other to drives are mirrored to eath other and hold 240GB worth of work.
I would like to buy (2) 500GB Drives to replace the 250GB Drives.
What is the easiest way to do this?
Idea 1) Will this work???
Break the raid by ejecting one of drives.
Put in one new 500GB Drive.
Copy all data from 250GB to 500GB
Eject 250GB drive
Put in other 500GB drive.
Re-set up Mirror with out losing data?
Idea 2)
Copy it all to an external drive....
Install new 500GB drives
Set up Mirror
Copy data back.
Hmmm... either way I'll have to set up all of my share points?
Thanks for helping me think this through.

Either path will work.
The first should be faster (the data only needs to be copied one), the second gives you a spare/backup copy of the data which might come in handy later.
Sharepoints are referenced by path, so as long as the new 500GB mirror is mounted in the same place as the existing 250GB mirror, your sharepoints should remain intact.

Mirrored RAID: MediaKit reports block size error

I am trying to create a 2nd set up backup drives for my photos. I have two new iomega 2TB drives, which look essentially identical to drives I'm currently using as my primary backups as a mirrored RAID set.
I can start the process with freshly erased and reformatted drives (with the default mac format, extended, journaled, unencrypted, not case-sensitive). And after a minute or three, I see
"MediaKit reports block size error, usually caused by not being a multiple of 512."
The RAID options are Mirrored RAID, Mac extended journaled, and options settings are default.
I see several series of posts with complaints about encrypting RAIDs and disk block sizes, but not unencrypted errors. I actually started out trying to do this with the 2006 MBP running 10.6.8 and got a different error: "POSIX reports: the operation couldn't be completed. Operation not permitted." I wasn't sure whether the 2TB RAID I already have was set up iwth the older or newer computer--it was definitely before I put Lion on this one--so I tried this one and now have a different error.
Any idea what the problem might be?

Update: I spent some time on the phone with an Apple support RAID expert, and couldn't figure out what the error was; we couldn't bypass it by playing with partitions on the drives, or any of another couple of manuevers that I've already forgotten. He noted that his own searches were showing a lot of mentions of similar problems but only with Iomega drives, and he was finding the same links I found earlier about problems creating encrypted drives. Now trying to decide if it's worth throwing more good money after bad for a call with Iomega support, and waiting to see if the iomega forum is at all helpful.

Mirrored Raid as boot disk?

I have a flat panel iMac (PPC) that I would like to have a bit more reliable. Due to the number of files I have on this machine, it is currently configured to boot from an external Firewire drive. Recently, I have added a second external firewire drive of the same size, and am considering a Mirrored raid configuration for this system. I am primarily interested in reliability, not increasing the performance of the system, hence the mirrored, rather than stripped, raid configuration.
It is clear from other postings on the web that a stripped raid requires a) reformatting the drives, losing all data, and b) cannot be used as a boot drive, which is mandatory in this case.
Therefore my questions:
1) Can I create a mirrored RAID using Disk Utility without data loss? One drive is newly formatted, the other is full of data.
2) Can this RAID be used to boot an early flat panel iMac?

Hi Eric Hildum;
1) No.
2) Probably yes. Practically no because it is going to cause you more problems then it is worth running both disk ins a RAID over a single Firewire channel.
Don't forget that Raid is not a valid backup solution. Any data on the RAID array should also be backed up for it's protection.
Personally for the home user, I think a good backup solution beats RAID. Usually there are less problems with backup then RAID.
Allan

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.

Disk Utility gives error and does not rebuild mirrored RAID

After having a HDD fail on a mirrored RAID I replaced the HDD and attempted to rebuild. Disk Utility reports via Console that it can not find an Apple Boot partition to check size and then fails to repair the RAID. Details follow.
Mac OS X v.10.4.8 Server
Power Mac G3 (Blue & White)
512MB RAM
20GB ATA HDD – boot device on internal ATA bus
4x 160GB ATA HDDs - setup in RAID scheme on Sonnet ATA/133 PCI card
RAID configured using Mac OS X v.10.4.8's Disk Utility and is an Apple RAID version 2.
RAID scheme <from "diskutil checkRAID" cmd>:
Welcome to Darwin!
[myserver:~] myadminuser% diskutil checkRAID
RAID SETS
Name: Mirror_2
Unique ID: 5FF8AD5F-0892-482D-B430-C7069D63AFD2
Type: Mirror
Status: Online
Device Node: disk3
Apple RAID Version: 2
# Device Node UUID Status
0 disk0s3 1FB48B00-3E52-4C29-8F05-2ED8BDAE4544 Online
1 disk6s3 BF2E69C6-698E-4D6A-A2A9-FE8CDAD8A7B1 Online
Name: Mirror_1
Unique ID: B448A09D-EC10-41EE-BA45-4D4071A88EA5
Type: Mirror
Status: Degraded
Device Node: disk5
Apple RAID Version: 2
# Device Node UUID Status
1 disk2s3 09AD5705-CF67-48B3-8E31-79983BD4781A Online
0 disk4s3 23EB1952-8B18-4400-A6FE-22C2F707C097 Failed
Name: StorageRAID1
Unique ID: 2B8349AB-F553-4FD2-8440-C575791DA858
Type: Stripe
Status: Online
Device Node: disk7
Apple RAID Version: 2
# Device Node UUID Status
0 disk3 5FF8AD5F-0892-482D-B430-C7069D63AFD2 Online
1 disk5 B448A09D-EC10-41EE-BA45-4D4071A88EA5 Online
I configured this RAID scheme (two two drive mirrors striped together) according to this kbase document: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304377
As shown in the above "diskutil checkRAID" output I have a failed HDD. So I replaced the HDD with another 160GB cold spare. I added the new drive to the mirror "Mirror_1" also known as disk5 and hit rebuild. Received the normal message that all data on the new drive I was adding would be erased.
I then receive the following error immediately in the Console Log:
Rebuilding RAID "Mirror_1"
2006-12-15 23:50:24.741 DiskManagementTool [375] WARNING: Could not find Apple Boot partition to check it's size, skipping disk5s-1s.
Rebuilding RAID slice "disk4s3"
Just to stem some confusion, the device ID disk4s3 has been used by the system for both the old failed HDD and the new replacement HDD.
The result of this attempted rebuild is I end up with all the data from Mirror_1 on the new HDD but the new HDD is not successfully added to the RAID, therefore Mirror_1 is still degraded and my problem not resolved.
I ran the appropriate rebuild cmd from both the GUI Disk Utility as described and from the CLI "diskutil repairMirror disk5 disk4s3" but no joy.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. This volume houses a large amount of important data including user home directories so while some offline time may be required data loss would not be very acceptable.
Thanks in advance and I will be happy to provide more information as necessary.

I guess doing it in Terminal would fail too:
diskutil repairMirror disk5 disk4

Maximum size for Xserve RAID modules

What is the maximum storage size for an Xserve RAID module?
Years ago, an Xserve RAID was out of my price range. Now, I'm looking into getting one on eBay and playing around with it.
I have been making Mirrored RAIDS with Western Digital 3 TB My Books.
Can I put 3 TB drives in an Xserve RAID? It probably depends on the controller firmware or something.
Thanks for thinking about this.
Doc

Short answer is no, you can't.
The XServe RAID has IDE drives mounted in a carrier. The maximum size drive shipped by Apple, supported under 1.5.1 firmware on the controllers is 750GB, though finding these on the used market is farily difficult. Aside from that, any IDE drive can be put in the carriers. If your unit has 'blank' slots, these are indeed just blank slots - you will need to get carriers / drive modules if you want disks in the slot if that makes sense.
People on the Internet, myself included, have experimented down the route of using IDE to SATA bridges in the carriers with 2.5" SATA drives which are more freely available. This way you can utilise cheap drives in your drive modules, or even SSDs (which offer little benefit I have found). Some users have had success with 1TB 2.5" SATA drives in this method, but not with anything bigger it seems. Myself, I've had suceess with 500GB SATA and 256GB SSD with this hacky method.
Hope that helps.

Mirrored Raid on Startup Drive?

Can I set up a Mirrored RAID with my Startup Drive without loosing the data?
I have a G5 Dual 1.8 running the latest OSX. I want to add a second internal HD, then setup a Mirrored RAID from my Startup Disk to my newly installed second internal drive. How do I set up this RAID without loosing anything on my startup drive? The new Drive will be the same size as my startup drive. I want the second drive as a backup startup drive.
Kevin Hawkins

Hi Kevin Hawkens;
What do you expact to gain by having a mirrored RAID?
Allan

Workaround to use drives with 4096b block for mirrored RAID?

I have 2 Hitachi 2TB Drives. One is a few months old and uses 512b blocks, the other is the same model, but newer and uses 4096b blocks.
When I try to set up the RAID Set I get the error: MediaKit reports block size error, usually caused by not being a multiple of 512.
From reading the message board, it looks like this a known bug when trying to encrypt drives with 4K block sizes or add them to a RAID Array.
Is there any way to set these up as a mirrored RAID array other than waiting for apple to fix the problem? Are there third party apps that can be used to fix this problem?
Thank you for your time.

I have the exact same problem, and until Apple solves this bug, I no longer have a hard drive large enoug for my Time Machine back-ups. I have submitted the bug, but I really need a solution. Please help!

Offline Disc In Degraded Mirrored RAID Set

I have a 2 disc (300GB each) mirrored RAID set that has worked fine up until recently. One slice appeared failed so I attempted to rebuild it. 7 hours later it still showed up as failed. I attempted a rebuild once more and the same result. I then shut everything down and re-booted my whole system. Now the RAID set is still degraded but the slice now shows up as offline as opposed to failed.
I checked the connections and it's all connected fine.
I have run First Aid several times and no repairs were necessary.
Anyway I can get this back 'online'?
If not, can I delete it, repair it and if it's repaired add it back to the RAID set?

It sounds like one of the drives in the mirrored set has lost its mind (i.e., failed).
This is exactly the situation Mirrored RAID is good for.
Remove the failed drive, insert your spare drive of the same or larger size, and assign it as a spare. Then you should be able to get the RAID to rebuild onto the spare and bring it up to date in the next half-a-day or so. Then the mirror will show as working again.
Make sure your Backup is up-to-date. A second failure now (before the array has rebuilt) will give you data loss.

Destroyed mirror RAID (1), Want to get data, but how?

I had a degraded mirrored RAID set that was functioning in its degraded state - reads and writes were no problem.
I thought that if I used DiskUtility to destroy the RAID, it would convert the drives to normal drives, and I would have access to each individually, but this was not the case. I also thought the data was backed up, but this was not the case.
I used the minus sign in the RAID tab DiskUtility to destroy the RAID. There are now 2 drives, but neither is able to be mounted:
bash-3.2# diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUIDpartitionscheme *698.6 Gi disk0
1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk0s1
/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUIDpartitionscheme *698.6 Gi disk2
1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk2s1
2: Apple_HFS 698.3 Gi disk2s2
If I try to verify the first disk:
bash-3.2# diskutil verifyDisk disk0
Error encountered attempting to verify/repair disk0: Unrecognized filesystem (-9958)
but if I try to mount it, it thinks the mount is successful, but nothing new shows up on the Desktop, nor with "df"
bash-3.2# diskutil mountDisk disk0
Volume(s) mounted successfully
in reality, the drive is NOT "mounted successfully."
disk2 is in worse shape, as the OS is not even fooled into thinking it is mountable:
bash-3.2# diskutil mountDisk disk2
One or more volume(s) failed to mount
So I am trying to put my recovery efforts toward disk0.
Any ideas on how to mount the drive and get data off of it?

I had the same issue a few months back.
1 drive of my mirroed raid died. So I took the working drive out of that box and put it in a FW enclosure. It mounted fine. However after converting it back to a regular volume it would not mount. I tried everything thing I exhausted google searches.
the only fix was to reinitialise the drive. Luckily I had the data backed up elsewhere.

Why is my new 10TB Mirrored RAID array only showing 1.8TB total space?

I have 5ea. 2TB Western Digital hard drives in a FirmTek 5PM enclosure connected via eSATA to my Mac Pro (April 2007 model). Running Leopard 10.5.8.
I used Apple Disk Utility to set up a Mirrored Raid using MacOS Extended (Journaled) and have a check mark by "Automatically Rebuild Raid Mirror Sets." My Raid Block size is 128K.
So, by all accounts I should have more than the 1.8TB showing as available space on this array.
Here is how it looks in my Disk Utillity app (link to smug pic of Disk Uility window): http://richardbrackin.smugmug.com/Other/blogpics/RAID/754262625_iffPY-S.jpg
I found a site here: http://blog.scottmroberts.com/archives/15 that discusses removing a GPT header but that doesn't sound like a good idea.
How do I get more capacity? I have clearly done something wrong.

Oh, you have mirrored one drive with 4 others creating a single 2 TB array consisting of one main member and four mirrors. I doubt this is your intended result. If you want a 10 TB RAID, then you want a "striped" not a "mirrored" RAID.
Now, you can make a striped RAID of one pair of drives, another striped RAID with another pair, then create a mirrored RAID of the two RAIDs. This would give you a 4 TB mirrored array. But the only way to use all five drives in a single array is a 5 drive striped RAID. To learn more about RAIDs see:
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?
Actually as I squinted at your tiny image I'm sure you never actually created a RAID. You have one 2 TB drives that are not properly arrayed with any of the other four drives.
Message was edited by: Kappy

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.

Increasing Size of Mirrored RAID

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