Mac Software RAID support

I'm using two LaCie Firewire 800/USB drives. I would like to know if it's possible for the mac to use one firewire port and one USB port as a RAID set. I would like to use a Wacom tablet, at the same time as the raid set.

If you can't invest or add ExpressCard, forget it.
There are so many things and threads about USB RAID, a horrible idea and implementation - maybe USB3 will come to the rescue in this century, until then, no, and ExpressCard with SATA and Port Multiplier (and not LaCie drive cases), and no daisy-chaining, no mixing hard drives and others on hub or consumer electronic devices.
And where is the bandwidth to drive all that over a very thin pipe or channel.
http://www.macsales.com/firewire - there are some cases with more storage, but you are still limited. If you had FW800 or heaven forbid! an actual native eSATA port.

Similar Messages

Cloning Server OS Raid0 to external Raid0(mac software raid) via CCC

Have OS X Server 10.5.8 on a couple of Seagates (2 X 1TB) Raid 0(striped)
Have 2 LaCie 1TB externals firewired to server configured as Raid 0 (striped)
Desire to make 'bootable' clone, for quick restore should the internal os volume fail.
Will select 'Install Mac OS 9 Disk Drivers' upon formatting/raid setup as it should be..right?
Using Carbon Copy Cloner should do the job, correct? Any experience relative to this by anyone?
Look forward to any opinion..thanks

Thank you!
Kappy Nov 24, 2014 3:01 PM
Re: Mac Pro's (early 2008) Back up plan towards a possible OS upgrade to Yosemite in response to Juan Huerta
All new drives need to be partitioned GUID and formatted Mac OS Extended, Journaled before they can be used.
OK, is that an option I'll be prompted to by the OS or do I have to "tell" that to...Disk Utilities (?)
If cloning is your purpose then use Disk Utility's Restore option. It will clone the drives and their Recovery HD partitions automatically.
I didn't know that Disk Utility had an option for cloning a bootable drive...is it better than CCC? (I have used neither one) I really would like to save $40 and avoid downloading additional software/applications...please if you don't mind...what option would that be once I click on "Disk Utility"? If you know of a good link or reliable article on the topic that will work for me too.
Test a clone be trying to boot the computer from it.
Any bootable drive in any bay can be used to boot the computer. Use Startup Drive preferences to set the desired boot volume.
Erase the target and try again.
But if the computer fails to start because I didn't create a good copy, how do I go back? Keyboard shortcuts? I keep reading that a wired keyboard must be used...and that's scary. If that's true, could I hook up any of my Windows based keyboards via USB?
Erase the drive and install OS X. You cannot use any software installed by the prior owner that was purchased via the App Store including OS X. You must start from scratch. (this actually is 5B rather than item 6.)
Well, he created an Admin account for me and I have been handling updates and everything with the new password he created for me. I wonder if I could access the Apple Store with my ID though...it's all under my name in that computer though, so I figure that at the Apple Store I'd just enter my ID...I guess, I have not tried that yet
Yes.

I have some questions regarding setting up a software RAID 0 on a Mac Pro

I have some questions regarding setting up a software RAID 0 on a Mac pro (early 2009).
These questions might seem stupid to many of you, but, as my last, in fact my one and only, computer before the Mac Pro was a IICX/4/80 running System 7.5, I am a complete novice regarding this particular matter.
A few days ago I installed a WD3000HLFS VelociRaptor 300GB in bay 1, and moved the original 640GB HD to bay 2. I now have 2 bootable internal drives, and currently I am using the VR300 as my startup disk. Instead of cloning from the original drive, I have reinstalled the Mac OS, and all my applications & software onto the VR300. Everything is backed up onto a WD SE II 2TB external drive, using Time Machine. The original 640GB has an eDrive partition, which was created some time ago using TechTool Pro 5.
The system will be used primarily for photo editing, digital imaging, and to produce colour prints up to A2 size. Some of the image files, from scanned imports of film negatives & transparencies, will be 40MB or larger. Next year I hope to buy a high resolution full frame digital SLR, which will also generate large files.
Currently I am using Apple's bundled iPhoto, Aperture 2, Photoshop Elements 8, Silverfast Ai, ColorMunki Photo, EZcolor and other applications/software. I will also be using Photoshop CS5, when it becomes available, and I will probably change over to Lightroom 3, which is currently in Beta, because I have had problems with Aperture, which, until recent upgrades (HD, RAM & graphics card) to my system, would not even load images for print. All I had was a blank preview page, and a constant, frozen "loading" message - the symbol underneath remained static, instead of revolving!
It is now possible to print images from within Aperture 2, but I am not happy with the colour fidelity, whereas it is possible to produce excellent, natural colour prints using its "minnow" sibling, iPhoto!
My intention is to buy another 3 VR300s to form a 4 drive Raid 0 array for optimum performance, and to store the original 640GB drive as an emergency bootable back-up. I would have ordered the additional VR300s already, but for the fact that there appears to have been a run on them, and currently they are out of stock at all, but the more expensive, UK resellers.
I should be most grateful to receive advice regarding the following questions:
QUESTION 1:
I have had a look at the RAID setting up facility in Disk Utility and it states: "To create a RAID set, drag disks or partitions into the list below".
If I install another 3 VR300s, can I drag all 4 of them into the "list below" box, without any risk of losing everything I have already installed on the existing VR300?
Or would I have to reinstall the OS, applications and software again?
I mention this, because one of the applications, Personal accountz, has a label on its CD wallet stating that the Licence Key can only be used once, and I have already used it when I installed it on the existing VR300.
QUESTION 2:
I understand that the failure of just one drive will result in all the data in a Raid 0 array being lost.
Does this mean that I would not be able to boot up from the 4 drive array in that scenario?
Even so, it would be worth the risk to gain the optimum performance provide by Raid 0 over the other RAID setup options, and, in addition to the SE II, I will probably back up all my image files onto a portable drive as an additional precaution.
QUESTION 3:
Is it possible to create an eDrive partition, using TechTool Pro 5, on the VR300 in bay !?
Or would this not be of any use anyway, in the event of a single drive failure?
QUESTION 4:
Would there be a significant increase in performance using a 4 x VR300 drive RAID 0 array, compared to only 2 or 3 drives?
QUESTION 5:
If I used a 3 x VR300 RAID 0 array, and installed either a cloned VR300 or the original 640GB HD in bay 4, and I left the Startup Disk in System Preferences unlocked, would the system boot up automatically from the 4th. drive in the event of a single drive failure in the 3 drive RAID 0 array which had been selected for startup?
Apologies if these seem stupid questions, but I am trying to determine the best option without foregoing optimum performance.

Well said.
Steps to set up RAID
Setting up a RAID array in Mac OS X is part of the installation process. This procedure assumes that you have already installed Mac OS 10.1 and the hard drive subsystem (two hard drives and a PCI controller card, for example) that RAID will be implemented on. Follow these steps:
1. Open Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities).
2. When the disks appear in the pane on the left, select the disks you wish to be in the array and drag them to the disk panel.
3. Choose Stripe or Mirror from the RAID Scheme pop-up menu.
4. Name the RAID set.
5. Choose a volume format. The size of the array will be automatically determined based on what you selected.
6. Click Create.
Recovering from a hard drive failure on a mirrored array
1. Open Disk Utility in (/Applications/Utilities).
2. Click the RAID tab. If an issue has occurred, a dialog box will appear that describes it.
3. If an issue with the disk is indicated, click Rebuild.
4. If Rebuild does not work, shut down the computer and replace the damaged hard disk.
5. Repeat steps 1 and 2.
6. Drag the icon of the new disk on top of that of the removed disk.
7. Click Rebuild.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2559
Drive A + B = VOLUME ONE
Drive C + D = VOLUME TWO
What you put on those volumes is of course up to you and easy to do.
A system really only needs to be backed up "as needed" like before you add or update or install anything.
/Users can be backed up hourly, daily, weekly schedule
Media files as needed.
Things that hurt performance:
Page outs
Spotlight - disable this for boot drive and 'scratch'
SCRATCH: Temporary space; erased between projects and steps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StandardRAIDlevels
(normally I'd link to Wikipedia but I can't load right now)
Disk drives are the slowest component, so tackling that has always made sense. Easy way to make a difference. More RAM only if it will be of value and used. Same with more/faster processors, or graphic card.
To help understand and configure your 2009 Nehalem Mac Pro:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/04/266ghz-8-core-mac-pro-review.ars/1
http://macperformanceguide.com/
http://www.macgurus.com/guides/storageaccelguide.php
http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/harddrives/index.html
http://macperformanceguide.com/OptimizingPhotoshop-Configuration.html
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404440.html

Mac OS X 10.4 - Software RAID 10???

Hello All...
As a motion graphics artist by trade and a musician at night, I am constantly faced with the on-going dilemma of my storage needs. As you may probably already know, these two activities eat up drive space and require a speedy storage solution as well.
Here's my current setup:
- PowerMac G5 Dual 2GHz (PCI-X) w/ 3GB of RAM.
- Sonnet Tempo-X eSATA 4x4 PCI-X card.
- MacGurus Burly 4 bay SATA enclosure.
- 2 250GB WD drives in the Burly enclosure.
I have the two 250GB WD drives in the external SATA enclosure software-RAIDed together to form one RAID 0 (striped) volume, using the OS X disk utility RAID feature. While that has resulted in an excellent, fast, big disk... I am starting to run into errors, and starting to lose sleep over the fact that the current setup is not redundant / reliable.
My initial solution was to buy two more disks, RAID them together as another striped volume and run backups from the first two-disk WD striped volume to the new striped RAID. So, four disks, two striped raids with two disks each.... But when I called Sonnet Tech Support, the support guy said that OS X 10.4 has support for RAID 10. That changes everything! If I could fill the Burly enclosure with 4 of the same disks and software RAID 10 them together, I'd be in business... I think...
Does OS X 10.4 really allow you to create a software RAID 10???
If so, do you think this is the most ideal solution for what I'm working with?
Keep in mind, I'm working with a low budget. No, XServes/XServe-RAID is NOT an option!
Any input is greatly appreciated!
TIA

Hi, noka.
Yes, it supports RAID 10. See "Disk Utility 10.5 Help: Protecting your data against hardware failure with a mirrored RAID set."
However, you may not get the performance you expect.
FWIW and IMO, unless one is running a high-volume transaction server with a 99.999% ("Five Nines") availability requirement, RAID is overkill. For example, unless you're running a bank, a brokerage, or a major e-commerce site, you're probably spending sums of time and money with RAID that could be applied elsewhere.
RAID is high on the "geek chic" scale, low on the practicality scale, and very high on the "complex to troubleshoot" scale when problems arise. The average user, even one in your lines of business, is better served by implementing a comprehensive Backup and Recovery solution and using it regularly.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

Moving Thunderbold DAS with software RAID 1 to different Mac

Background: I am preparing to wipe my iMac (currently Mavericks) to then do a clean install of Yosemite. Attached to my iMac is a "WD MyBook Thunderbolt Duo". This external "DAS" drive model is a single enclosure that contains two, 2TB physical drives, and attaches to the iMac with a single Thunderbolt cable. I am not using any WesternDigital software on my iMac! Instead, I have used Disk Utility to manage the drive and have created a single 2TB software RAID 1 array (HFS+Journaled) incorporating both of the 2 physical drives as slices. The RAID 1 volume mounts as "DAS" on my Desktop and currently contains the majority of my media files.
Before beginning the repartitioning, formatting, and doing a clean install of Yosemite on the iMac's internal HDD, I plan on disconnecting the DAS's thunderbolt cable so it's safe from the install process.
Question: What I need to know is what to expect when I eventually reconnect the DAS to the new Yosemite installation. Will my RAID 1 volume "DAS" simply mount on the desktop as expected?
What I don't understand is where software RAID slice and volume configurations are stored. Is the software RAID 1 configuration stored as part of the partition table on the drives themselves or is it stored on the Mac? I am hoping to hear that the software RAID configuration is all on the drives themselves and therefore the drive can be reattached to a new Mac and it will just recognize the configuration and mount the volume normally with no additional effort. Can someone please confirm this to ease my mind (or save me before I go ahead with this).
Sorry to put this in the OS X Server forum but I thought that a software RAID question using Disk Utility would be best answered from the expertise here.
I appreciate any info you can provide.

Yes the software RAID configuration is stored on the drives themselves so it will be safe to disconnect from one Mac and reconnect to a second Mac.
Note to others. Any Mac that supports Thunderbolt is going to be running a new enough version of OS X so as to not cause a problem.

Can you move a software raid 1 from one mac to another

I have a 2 disc software raid 1 on my powermac and I want to move it to my mac pro. Does anyone know if I can do this?

It appears that in Mac OS X 10.4, and again in the transition to 10.7, RAID format may have undergone dramatic changes. If you are trying to move a RAID array across those boundaries, you may not have the best results moving the drives directly.

Software Raid Inconsistent on a mac pro

My software raid 0 array is sometimes slow, sometimes fast. Using the Blackmagic disk speed test utility, it sometimes gets 97MB/s read speed, and sometimes 150MB/s read speed. I ensure nothing else is running in the background between tests. Another test I do is to duplicate a folder containing 1 gig of files. Sometimes it takes twice as long to duplicate it. Early 2008 Mac Pro, 8 cores, 8 gig mem, raid 0 is two 750gig Caviars (using the 4th internal bay for time machine) Disk utility reports all is clean. Lion 10.7.1. Rebuild array? ideas?

Mac OS X runs with main memory massively over-committed. Because of this, it often has to return to the Boot Drive to get a few pages of this or that. This activity moves the read/write heads ways from the data area on the data drive and kills RAID performance.
If you have not done so already, you should consider creating a separate Boot Drive containing System, Library, Applications, and the hidden unix files including Paging/Swap. Move all User files off that drive, except one Admin User used only for Administration, not daily work.

Is it true any Mac Pro can do software RAID 0?

I dont know why I never came across this, but is it true that any Mac Pro (or just macs in general??) can do software RAID 0 if you have two of the identical hard drives? Basically the OS handles everything and no special hardware or card is needed?
If true, what would be the reason so little people do it for faster disk access??

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?

Latest Mac Pro, RAID 10 in software

What is the formatted capacity of the latest Mac Pro using 4x 4tb disks under software RAID 10 ?

What does the 'Hardware RAID' view in System Profiler say after the battery has appeared to finish conditioning? There should be a field about the last condition date, does it actually get filled in when the condition is finished prior to restarting?
Edit: I know you said about it says Unknown, but did it say that after it finished conditioning or after you restarted.
Message was edited by: Burn baby burn!

Mac software updater beta says it supports E52 but...

I installed the beta software updater on OSX Lion and install went fine. The info states explicitly that my version E52-1 is supported. But when I connect and try to run the update it says the model is NOT supported. Any help?
I am getting so tired of nothing ever working easily or as claimed with Nokia anymore. I am a lifelong user but they have major issues with ease of use.

Better to find out problem before starting update attempt as Mac Software Updater upon Snow Leopard managed to lose contact with my E7 during update leaving device in flash mode, which was a classic NSU on Windows PC phenomenum and never had such problems with Mac before!
Happy to have helped forum with a Support Ratio = 42.5

As iMac user upgraded to Mountain Lion and lost all Legacy connection with years of Apple/Mac data storage. How can recovery since every default says "no longer supported, After years of Mac software use now it is not accessible ??????

As iMac user upgraded to Mountain Lion lost all Legacy connection with years of Apple/Mac data storage. How can recovery since every default says "no longer supported, After years of Mac software use now it is not accessible ??????

Please provide more details. What version OS X were you using?
Are you saying that Mail faIled to upgrade and you lost your old mail?
Are you asking about PowerPC applications that require Rosetta to run like AppleWorks and Microsoft Office 2004?

My mac doesn't support pmb software for sony handycam what should i do?

my mac doesn't support pmb software for sony handycam what should i do?

Provide the model number please. And eww-PMB stands for "Picture Motion Browser"

Mac Pro with software raid and upgrading to Snow Leopard

Not sure if anyone else has experienced this but here goes. I have a mac pro with 4 500G drives using the onboard software raid. When I insert the Snow Leopard disk and try to install, it fails to find the raid. Is there a trick to get this to work?

Thank you SSSOOO much Greg818. I was pulling my hair out over this problem. I even went so far as to do a full Leopard install with Snow Leopard update on a USB drive and them cloned it over to my RAID 0 array using SuperDuper hoping that this would solve the problem. It seemed to in the sense that the clone went fine but then when I would try and boot from the array I would get the Apple Logo and spinning wheel but it just kept spinning and spinning until finally the Apple logo was replaced by the Do Not Enter symbol(you know the circle with the slash through it).
So came here and found this thread. Your solution worked like charm!!! Once again thank you so much... you saved me from being bald.

Software RAID Failure - my experience and solution

I just wanted to share this information with the iCloud community.
I searched a bit and did not find much information that was useful with regard to my software RAID issue.
I have 27 inch Mid 2011 iMac with SSD and Hard drive which has been great.
I added an external hard drive (I think if I mention any brand name the moderator will delete this post) which includes an nice aluminum case with two 3 TB hard drives within it, and it has a big blue light on the front and is connected via Thunderbolt. This unit is about 2 years old and I have it configured in a 3 TB mirrored RAID (RAID 1) via a software RAID configured via Mac OS Disk Utility.
I had at one point a minor glitch which was fixed using another piece of software (again if I mention a brand the moderator will delete this post) which is like a 'Harddrive Fighter' or similar type name LOL.   So otherwise that RAID has served me well as a site for my Time Machine back up and Aperture Vault, etc. (I created a 1.5 TB Sparse bundle for Time Machine so that the backup would not use the entire 3 TBs)
I recently purchased a second aluminum block of drives, and set that up as a 4 TB RAID 1.
Each of the two RAIDs are set with the option of “Automatically rebuild RAID mirror sets” checked.
I put only about 400 gb on the new RAID to let it sit for a ‘burning in period.’
A few days ago the monitoring software from the vendor who sells the aluminum block of drives told me I had a problem. One of the drives had “Failed.”   The monitoring software strangely enough does not distinguish the drives so you can figure out which pair had the issue, so I assumed it was the New 8 TB model. Long story short, it was the older 6 TB model, but that does not matter for this discussion.
I contacted the vender and this is part of their response.
“This is an indication that the Disk Utility application in Mac had a momentary problem communicating with the drive mechanism. As a result, it marked that drive as "failed" in the header information. Unfortunately, once this designation is applied to a drive by the OS, the Disk Utility will thereafter refuse to attempt any further operations with that disk until the incorrect "failed" marker is manually cleared off the drive.”
That did not sound very good to me…..back up killed by a SOFTWARE GLITCH?
“The solution is to remove the corrupted volume header, and allow the generation of a new one….This command will need to be done for each disk in the array… (using Terminal)…
diskutil zerodisk (identifier)
…3. After everything is finished, you should be able to exit Terminal, and go back into the Disk Utility Application to re-configure the RAID array on the device.”
Furthermore they said.
“If the Disk Utility has placed a flag into the RAID array header (which exists on both drives) then performing this procedure on a single drive will not correct anything.”
And…
“When a drive actually does fail, it typically stops appearing in the Disk Utility application altogether. In that circumstance, it will never be marked "failed" by the Disk Utility, so the header erase operation is not needed.”
This all sounded like a bad idea to me. And what does the Vendors RAID monitor software say then? “Disk Really Really FAILED, check for a fire.”
As I tried to figure out which drive was actually the bad RAID pair I stumbled on a solution.
First I noted that the OS Disk Utility did NOT show a fault in the RAID. It listed both RAIDS as “Online.’ Thus no rebuilding was needed and it did not begin the rebuild process.
The Vendors disk monitor software saw some fault, but Mac was still able to read and write to the RAID, both disks in the mirror. I wrote a folder to the RAID and with various rebooting steps I pulled the “Bad” drive and looked at the “Good” Drive….the folder was there…I put the Bad drive back in and pulled the Good Drive and the folder was there on the “bad” drive. So it wrote to both drives. AND THE VENDORS MONITORING SOFTWARE SHOWED THE PREVIOUSLY LABELED ‘BAD’ DRIVE AS ‘GOOD’ AND THE MISSING DRIVE SLOT AS ‘BAD’.
My stumbled FIX.   I moved a bunch of files off the failed RAID to the new RAID but before I moved the sparse bundle, a folder of 500 gigs movies and some other really big folders the DISK UTILITY WINDOW (which I still had open) now showed that the RAID had a Defect and began rebuilding the mirror set itself, out of the blue!   I don't know why this happened. But moving about 1/2 of the data off of it perhaps did something? Any Ideas?
This process took a few hours as best I can tell (let it run overnight) and the next day the RAID was fine and the Vendors RAID monitor did not show a fault any longer.
So, the Vendors RAID monitoring software reporting a “FAILED” drive without any specific error codes to look up. Perhaps they could have more info for the user on the specific fault? The support line of the the Vendor said with certainty “the Volume Header is corrupted” and THE ONLY FIX is to completely ZERO THE DRIVE! This was not necessary as it turns out.
And the stick in the eye to me…..
“I've also sometimes seen the drives get marked as "failed" by the disk utility due to a shaky connection. In some cases, swapping the ends of the Thunderbolt cable will help with this. Something to try, perhaps, if your problems come back. “
Ya Right…..
Mike

Follow up.
After going through the Zeroing process and rebuilding the RAID set three times, with various configurations, LaCie finally agreed to repair the unit under warrantee.
I tried swapping the power supplies and thunderbolt wires, tried taking the drive out of series with the newer big brother of it. And it still failed after a few days.
I just wanted to share more of what I learned with regard to rebuilding the RAID sets via the Terminal. The commands can be typed partially and a help paragraph will come up to give VERY cryptic descriptions of the proper use of the commands.
First Under terminal you can used the command "diskutil appleRAID list" to list those drives which are in the RAID. This gives you the ID number for each physical drive. For example:
AppleRAID sets (1 found)
===============================================================================
Name:                 LaCie RAID 3TB
Unique ID:            84A93ADF-A7CA-4E5A-B8AE-8B4A8A6960CA
Type:                 Mirror
Status:               Online
Size:                 3.0 TB (3000248991744 Bytes)
Rebuild:              manual
Device Node:          disk4
# DevNode   UUID                                  Status     Size
0 disk3s2   D53F6A81-89F1-4FB3-86A9-8808006683C2 Online     3000248991744
- disk2s2   E58CA8F5-1D2C-423A-B4BE-FBAA80F85879 Spare      3000248991744
===============================================================================
In my situation with the failed RAID, I had an extra disk in this with the status of Missing/Failed.
The command is "diskutil appleRAID remove" and the cryptic help paragraph says:
Usage: diskutil appleRAID remove MemberDeviceName|MemberUUID
        RAIDSetVolumePath|RAIDSetDeviceName|RAIDSetUUID
MemberDeviceName|MemberUUID is the number listed in the "diskutil appleRAID List" command, and
RAIDSetVolumePath|RAIDSetDeviceName|RAIDSetUUID is the Device Node for the RAID which here is /dev/disk4.
I used this command to remove the third entry (missing/failed), I did not copy the terminal window text on that one, so I cannot show the list of three disks.
I could not get to remove the disk2s2 disk listed as SPARE, as it gave an error message:
Michaels-iMac:~ mike_aronis$ diskutil appleraid remove E58CA8F5-1D2C-423A-B4BE-FBAA80F85879 /dev/disk4
Started RAID operation on disk4 LaCie RAID 3TB
Removing disk from RAID
Changing the disk type
Can't resize the file system on the disk "disk2s2"
Error: -69827: The partition cannot be resized
But I was able to remove it using the graphical interface Disk Utility program using the delete key.
I then rebuilt the RAID set by dragging the second drive back into the RAID set.
I could not get the command: "diskutil appleRAID update AutoRebuild 1 /dev/disk4" to work, because even though it was trying to execute it HUNG. I put the two drives into my newer LaCie 2big as my attempt at further trouble shooting the RAID (this was not suggested by LaCie tech), rebuild the RAID and now I am going to leave it setup that way for a few days before I ship it back to just see if the old drives work fine in the new RAID box (thus proving the RAID box is the problem). I tried the AutoRebuild 1 command just now and it gave an error.
Michaels-iMac:~ mike_aronis$ diskutil appleraid update autorebuild 1 /dev/disk4
Error updating RAID: Couldn't modify RAID (-69848)
Michaels-iMac:~ mike_aronis$
In my haste to rebuild the RAID set for the third or forth time as LaCie led me through the testing this and test that phase, I forgot to click the "Auto Rebuild" option in the Disk Utility program.
Question for the more experienced:
As I was working on this issue, I notice that each time I rebooted and did work in the Terminal (with and without the RAID plugged in to the thunderbolt connection) I notice that the list of drives would change and my main boot drive would not stay listed as drive 0! Some times it would be drive 0, sometimes the RAID would be listed as Drive 0. It's strange to me...I would have thought the designation for Drive0 and Drive1 would always be my two build in drives (SSD and spinning drive).
Mike

Software RAID issue

I have just installed 2-200 GB seagate hd's into my machine and set them up as a software raid 0. Also installed is the original 80 GB drive and a Hitachi 160 GB drive. The two new drives functioned long enough for me to copy all of my raw digital home video.
Now, when I try to boot the grey Apple screen comes up and the machine hangs. When I disconnect the drives, it boots right up.
I thought maybe my power supply was giving up the ghost until I reconnected them and successfully rebooted with Drive Genius 1.2. I rebuilt the raid set (maintaining all data) and rebooted into OSX successfully. Woohoo!
But not so fast. Next reboot started the same thing. And now Drive Genius has no effect.
I really dont wan't to lose the data on these drives. Is there a problem with the software raid in 10.4.7? Any ideas of other things to try? Help?!?!
Thanks,
Andy
G4 1.25DP FW800 Mac OS X (10.4.7)
G4 1.25DP FW800 Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Possibly a couple things that "aren't quite right" with your setup.
SoftRAID 3.5 supports mirror for boot drive, but not with stripped.
The two IDE buses are not identical, making for some slight problems with RAID on the two.
You really can't RAID if both drives are together in one drive cage on the same IDE bus.
You need a PCI controller to RAID in MDD. Most people at this point in time opt for Serial ATA drives and controller. If you want a bootable SATA drive...
http://www.firmtek.com/seritek
If you must boot from stripped RAID (not always a good idea and may not offer much actually in real world performance, check www.barefeats.com for some tests for one).
A dedicated boot drive for OS/Apps and use other drives for media, data, scratch, even for /users.
Two ATA drives on the same bus, have to share the bus, contend for I/O.
You can create a stripe raid with Disk Utility and boot.
I assume that you read the SoftRAID QuickStart and Manual which really are helpful. There are a number of sites etc that can go into more about RAID.

Mac Software RAID support

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