Migrating a Single 250GB Drive to 2TB RAID 5 Array

My Mac Pro has the original 250GB hard drive it came with. I just purchased a Mac Pro RAID Card. My intention is to install 2 1TB drives, and create a RAID 5 with the three drives. Obviously the new set will only use 250GB on each of the 2 new 1TB drives. Once the array is fully built out, I plan on removing the 250GB drive, and have the array rebuild on the 3rd 1TB drive. This should leave me at the same place i was with the 250GB drive installed.
What I am wondering is that will the RAID utility now see extra space on all three drives, and subsequently allow me to create an additional RAID 5 set with the available space? I'm doing this in lieu of cloning the 250GB to a 1TB drive, boot from the 1TB drive, and then migrating a single boot volume to a RAID set.
Any ideas is appreciated. Thanks.

A thread that looked into RAID5.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1070319&tstart=0
A good start, AMUG review of the Mac Pro 2008.
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/intel/macpro-2008/
NewerTech to use ODD SATA ports to attach your OEM and one other drive. Free up your four internal drive bays.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/MPQXES2/
Alternative to Apple Pro RAID - HighPoint RocketRAID 3522
Barefeats: RAID 3 vs RAID 5 vs RAID 6
http://www.barefeats.com/hard101.html
AMUG Review HighPoint RocketRAID 3522
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/3522/
4-drive RAID performance
http://www.barefeats.com/harper13.html
Estimating capacity:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306212
Personally, from using RAIDs, don't mix drives with different performance, platters, seek or firmware.

Similar Messages

Both drives failed in RAID 1 array. How do I recover from this?

So I have a large problem on my hands; my RAID 1 array has 2 disks which have both failed. One disk failed at a time with a span of about a month between the 2 failures. Since I hear no clicking noises from the disks and I can still see both of them when I do a "diskutil list", I'm guessing the disk electronics are good as well, so I should be able to work with the disks. Here's the output from "diskutil checkRaid" :
Name: USB RAID Set 1
Unique ID: AD191DE5-49CB-4BEE-9362-D98B690DAC3A
Type: Mirror
Status: Offline
Device Node: disk2
Apple RAID Version: 2
# Device Node UUID Status
0 disk1s3 5D09E4DE-E0E9-4518-8672-F247F5CE0CBB Failed
1 disk3s3 431B65E0-DF51-4045-8C1E-CCB69E95916D Failed
Here's what I'd like to do: Although I have a good idea of which of the 2 disks has the most recent data on it, I'd like to be able to mount disk1s3 and disk3s3 independently and compare which has more data on it. Then, I'm going to plug in another USB hard disk and copy the data from the failed raid disk with the greatest disk utilization over to the USB disk I plugged in. At that point I'll trash the RAID 1 array and start over again. Of course I have no backup of my data, so just recovering isn't an option (my genius thinking was, "Ahh who needs backups, I'm using RAID!" Hah.. good one).
I tried doing the following to mount the slices: # diskutil mount disk1s3 and # diskutil mount disk1s3 force. Neither of which mount the disk. I've also tried specifying a mount point and that doesn't work either. All commands come back with "Volume disk1s3 mounted" but if I type "mount", I don't see it mounted anywhere. dmesg and /var/log/system.log don't give me anything useful about why the slices don't mount... the only thing I see from dmesg are the errors which started this mess:
HFS resolvelink: can't find iNode6487433
USBF: 107524. 33 AppleUSBEHCI[0x27c4800]::DoControlTransfer sync request on workloop thread. Use async!
AppleRAID::recover() member 5D09E4DE-E0E9-4518-8672-F247F5CE0CBB from set "USB RAID Set 1" (AD191DE5-49CB-4BEE-9362-D98B690DAC3A) has been marked offline.
AppleRAID::restartSet - restarting set "USB RAID Set 1" (AD191DE5-49CB-4BEE-9362-D98B690DAC3A).
disk2: media is not present.
HFS: err 6 reading VH blk (RAID 1)
jnl: flushing fs disk buffer returned 0x6
disk2: media is not present.
jnl: dojnlio: strategy err 0x6
jnl: writejournalheader: error writing the journal header!
AppleRAID::restartSet - restarting set "USB RAID Set 1" (AD191DE5-49CB-4BEE-9362-D98B690DAC3A).
AppleRAIDSet::addMember() detected expired sequenceNumber (12) for member 5D09E4DE-E0E9-4518-8672-F247F5CE0CBB
Also here's a diskutil list in case that's useful to anyone:
# diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: type name size identifier
0: Applepartitionscheme *74.5 GB disk0
1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 KB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 74.4 GB disk0s3
/dev/disk1
#: type name size identifier
0: Applepartitionscheme *931.5 GB disk1
1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 KB disk1s1
2: Apple_Boot 128.0 MB disk1s2
3: Apple_RAID 931.4 GB disk1s3
/dev/disk2
#: type name size identifier
0: Apple_HFS *931.4 GB disk2
/dev/disk3
#: type name size identifier
0: Applepartitionscheme *931.5 GB disk3
1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 KB disk3s1
2: Apple_Boot 128.0 MB disk3s2
3: Apple_RAID 931.4 GB disk3s3
/dev/disk4
#: type name size identifier
0: Applepartitionscheme *647.5 MB disk4
1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 KB disk4s1
2: Apple_HFS DiskWarriorCD 647.4 MB disk4s2
So, does anyone know how I can mount the slices independently so that I can grab the data off the useful slice?

Ok figured this one out myself. So the file system types that the FS is labeled with isn't known by the standard mount program, but really under the covers apple's software raid slice is just a HFS partition. Fantastic.
1) So first you figure out what slice you want to mount, in my case /dev/disk1s3 (oh ya, unlike the diskutil command, you need to actually specify the full path to the device so you need the /dev in there)
2) Create a mount point to mount the slice to "mkdir /Volumes/disk1s3" for example
3) Mount it up! "mount -t hfs /dev/disk1s3 /Volumes/disk1s3"
4) If you're interested in actually using the GUI to view the files, you can place an alias on your desktop by doing a "ln -s /Volumes/disk1s3 /Users/<putyour_user_namehere>/Desktop/disk1s3 "
This probably only works for a RAID 1 or maybe even a RAID 1+0 but in any case it allowed me to pull my data off so that I could back the data up and re-create the RAID 1 setup. You should only be doing this if both your drives get marked as failed, otherwise it's way easier to just use the disk utility to repair the array.

Video FX: video effects and editing drive (incl. RAID disk arrays)

Having had an issue with rendering iMovie effects and read through a few posted thread, I ran an experiment that pinpoints an incompatibility between iMovie and large size (800GB) RAID array volumes. Hence the following questions:
Is iMovie designed to support large sire RAID disk arrays ?
Could anybody test a non-RAID array large size (say 500GB or better 1000GB) volume to check if it is size or RAID dependent ?
When can we expect a fix ?
For more details, please read on.
Reading through the other threads talking about the Quartz composer effects, it sounds like the Apple programmers have a lot of work ahead to deliver a more robust 6.0.2 version.
I wanted to record the noticed incompatibility of working with a project outside the System & Application drive and applying Quartz composer effects.
Most keen videographers are using either a good large size external drive, a RAID array or a separate partition to store their video footage and editing work. So the noticed incompatibility needs to be looked into.
Interestingly, I read of other users having the same problem but Karl Petersen also mentionned that he didn't have the problem ...
So, what's wrong ? If the problem would be consistent, it would be easy to have Apple on their toes to fix it, but if not ...
So I ran a small experiment. I took the same iMovie project and copied it to my different disks and volumes (at least the ones where I had enough space) and tested 3 types of effects:
-1- the non-Quartz Composer 'fast/slow/reverse' effect, which caused me trouble already in iMovie '05;
-2- the Quartz Composer 'sepia tone' effect, which I was using without problem in the previous version;
-3- the non-Quartz Composer 'aged film' effect, which I was using without problem in the previous version;
My disk and volume configuration is the following:
-> First internal 500GB Serial ATA Disk split into 3 partitions:
a) 30GB System & Applications Drive (Start-up Disk);
b) 20GB Pictures Drive;
c) 415.6GB Partition as Slice 1 of my Apple RAID array;
-> Second internal 500GB Serial ATA Disk split into 4 partitions:
d) 15GB Virtual PC System & Applications Drive;
e) 15GB MAC & PC Documents Drive;
f) 20GB Musics Drive;
g) 415.6GB Partition as Slice 2 of my Apple RAID array;
-> Internal 831.3GB Apple RAID Array - striped RAID set made of 2 slices (volumes c and g above);
-> External 120GB FireWire Disk in one volume.
All volumes are formated using Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.
The result is consistent and points towards an incompatibility of iMovie with either very large size volume or RAID array. Indeed, all tested effects preview fine on all tested volumes, however, they can be applied seemlessly on all tested volumes apart for my large size RAID array.
When the project is on the RAID array, hitting the apply button results in the following:
For the non-Quartz Composer 'fast/slow/reverse' effect and the Quartz Composer 'sepia tone' effect, rendering starts but then stops a fraction of a second later (as if it was unable to write the rendered file to disk). Resulting image in the video viewer is shifted diagonally to leave a black corner on the bottom-left.
For the non-Quartz Composer 'aged film' effect, rendering starts and proceeds but the resulting image in the video viewer is again shifted diagonally to leave a black corner on the bottom-left. Note that resizing the iMovie window corrects this viewer issue.
Conclusion:
Is iMovie designed to support large sire RAID disk arrays ?
Could anybody test a non-RAID array large size (say 500GB or better 1000GB) volume to check if it is size or RAID dependent ?
When can we expect a fix ?
Regards,
Alex

I had the same problem rendering a movie with iMovie 6 when the file is placed on a second internal disk.
Clicking the 'Ignore ownership on this volume' tick box is a solution but I find it too blunt. My Mac is configured as a multiuser system and I bought the second internal disk to use it for my /Users directory. I thus don't want the different users to be able to create files in each others directories.
When unclicking the 'Ignore ownership on this volume' tick box again I'm surprised to find that rendering still works fine for all users with the desired file integrity.
I would have preferred to set up all the permissions using unix commands instead of all this magic. Can anyone explain the proper way to configure the correct permissions using the Terminal?
Power Mac G5 DP 1.8GHz Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Expanding the drives into a raid 5 array?

I am going to purchase a powermac soon, but I want to understand raid arrays a bit better. I am an HD video editor, and am getting into large files sizes...Red, XDCam, 2K etc. I can buy any 4TB raid array with a card, or I read that I can add 3 extra 1TB hard drives inside the mac pro and stripe them raid 5? I know 3 drives aren't the best for redundancy, but will it work? Will I also need Apple's raid controller for this.
As a side not, someone said use all 4 drives as an array, but the OS has to operate on its own drive unless there is something I don't know.
Any ideas are appreciated.

I know 3 drives aren't the best for redundancy, but will it work?
Hi,
If you are thinking of using the 2009 Mac Pro internal hard disk sleds to create a RAID 5 you would need a $699 Mac Pro RAID Card. http://store.apple.com/us/product/MA849Z/B
Three HDs can be used in a RAID 5, but as one disk is used for parity data this only leaves you with the volume size of two HDs and performance = to two hard disks in RAID 0. This is not an option I would select. The other downside to this configuration is the Mac Pro RAID Card does NOT support Boot Camp.
RR 2314 & SeriTek/5PM
If you want RAID 5, Boot Camp and the ability to use the internal bays for a Mac OS X system an external RAID 5 is a good choice. The HighPoint RR 2314 and the SeriTek/5PM provide a nice solution at a reasonable price.
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/2314/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/5pm/
As the SeriTek/5PM only requires one port on the RR 2314, users can expand to up to 20 hard disks using four enclosures. Even a single 5-bay, RAID 5 can support a 4TB volume using inexpensive 1TB hard disks. Larger hard disks are also supported. This option provides more hard disk mounting options and costs about the same as the Apple RAID 5 card.
RocketRAID 4322 & Proavio EB8MS
Another option is the HighPoint RR 4322. The controller supports RAID levels 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10, 50, hot spare and JBOD configurations. While more expensive, the RocketRAID 4322 adds RAID 6, SAS compatibility and supports an 8-bay enclosure like the Proavio EB8MS.
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/4322/
http://www.proavio.com/eb8ms.html
RocketRAID 4322 & Enhance UltraStor RS16 JS
Another amazing performance option is the RR 4322 matched with the Enhance UltraStor RS16 JS. This 16-bay configuration provides high performance and supports large volume sizes. When AMUG tested this configuration with 16 Samsung 1TB hard disks in RAID 6 mode the volume size was 11.8TB and the average write performance across the volume was 696MB/sec. while the average read performance was 833MB/sec.
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/4322/
http://www.amug.org/members/reviews/articles/enhance/rs16js/
Have fun!

IX4-300D how do I import a new drive into RAID 5 Array?

I already had a 3 x 2TB RAID 5 array, added new forth drive (same 2TB drive model) and let it auto format, which completed OK, but when I look at Status in Admin I see "Unallocated 1.8TB". This tells me the drive was formated but not imported into the Array.
Looking at Drive Management Page it shows all four drives installed but offers no actions, you cannot even select a drive to display or take action on.
Going into Settings only shows the settings I used to create the RAID 5 initially, no other options. I would expect a workflow of right click new drive and select to import into RAID 5.
Looking in the help section no detail on RAID only a basic comment on what RAID is.
Something badly missing here. Is there some info I have missed?
Peter

Hello 2Old2Slow
I highly recommend that you do make plans to backup your data from the unit before attempting to expand the RAID just in case something goes wrong in the process.
When trying to expand an existing RAID 5 from 3 to 4 disks, you can use the "add disks to storage system" option that is located in Drive Management>Settings. This option will become available after a new drive is added to the empty drive and the unit is powered back on. It may need to overwrite the new disk, it will indicate which disk is being overwritten by marking the new drive with green stripes. If you are being asked to overwrite data but none of the disks show green stripes, please stop and backup first as proceeding will most likely result in all disks being overwritten.
LenovoEMC Contact Information is region specific. Please select the correct link then access the Contact Us at the top right:
US and Canada: https://lenovo-na-en.custhelp.com/
Latin America and Mexico: https://lenovo-la-es.custhelp.com/
EU: https://lenovo-eu-en.custhelp.com/
India/Asia Pacific: https://lenovo-ap-en.custhelp.com/
http://support.lenovoemc.com/

Xserve SSD OS drive Raid 5 array - What if SSD OS drive is corrupt or fails

Xserve SSD OS Drive option with Raid 5 array - What if SSD OS drive fails or the OS becomes corrupted? Could you just re install the os and then upload all of your server settings and it would be able to talk to the raid array and be good to go?
Additionally if the os is in the raid 5 and becomes corrupted and you are not able to get the os to boot would the raid 5 data not be able to be accessed? Or could you just reinstall the os on the array and be ok?
This would be the same if the os is inside a software mirror set?
Thanks in advance!!!

Hi
If you're asking can OSX Server be reinstalled without a reformat the answer would be no. This assumes you're using the OSX Server Installer DVD. Assuming no other hardware issues you should be able to access any/all data on any of the Drives using Target Disk Mode and another mac. This will at least allow a transfer of important data to another source. Having said that you should be keeping back-ups anyway.
You can export Server Admin's configuration as a series of property lists. You can export Users, Groups and Computer Lists from WorkGroup Manager. You can archive the whole of the LDAP database - which will contain everything except home folder information - using Server Admin.
I'm not sure if this is still the case but one of Apple's Best Practice tips was to setup and configure the Server exactly as you wanted it first. Once you're happy use any one of probably half a dozen methods to make a Bootable cloned backup. A free built-in method would be to boot from an appropriate Installer Disk and save the Server OS as a .dmg to a connected USB or Firewire disk. Or use something like CarbonCopyCloner to do regular scheduled clones to an externally attached drive.
My 2p.
Tony

Configuring 2 SATA drives for an OS X RAID 1 array & also for OS 9.

Does anyone know if a configuration like this might work in a G4 AGP Graphics "Sawtooth"?
• A SATA controller card that supports RAID 1, such as one of the FirmTek SeriTek cards at the below links:
[http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Firmtek/SATA1V4>
[http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Firmtek/SATA1EVE22>
• Two 500 GB, 640 GB, or 1 TB SATA drives.
• Partitioning 200 GB of each drive for use by OS 9 when booting directly into it.
• Using the two drives in a RAID 1 array when booted into OS X.
• Not installing a 3rd-party RAID software utility for OS 9.
Specifically, does anyone know what would happen when one boots into OS 9? Would the two drives simply be seen as two separate 200 GB partitions?

Hi-
Would the two drives simply be seen as two separate 200 GB partitions?
That is how it should work.
Go one better, and find SoftRAID 2.2 and RAID the 2 200 GB partitions for use in OS 9.

Snow Leopard Installer Not Seeing RAID 5 Array

I currently have a Mac Pro with Leopard installed on an internal RAID 5 array. When I run the 10.6 installer to upgrade the only install disk choices I see are two external USB drives. The RAID 5 array is not in the list of possible install drives. Any idea what might be wrong here?

The fact it asked if you want to create RAID5 = Apple Pro RAID card was BTO and is present. Open it up, Apple's RAID card is there likely. And uses iPass so that your drive sleds connect to the controller rather than the motherboard Intel AHCI.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1346
http://www.apple.com/support/macpro/
Photo: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3514
RAID5 capacity - http://support.apple.com/kb/TA24883
RAID5 discussion from before (myself, mbean, poster)
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8446960
MaxConnect SAS/SATA Link for Mac Pro (iPass)
http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=category.display&category _id=332
Apple Mac Pro RAID Card is an SAS controller
http://blogs.computerworld.com/applemac_pro_raid_card_is_an_sascontroller

RAID 5 array on PERC6/i offline

Ok, so we have a 2970 with a PERC6/i. 5 drives in a RAID 5 array, and one hot spare. I apparently lost two drives today, one to a failure, and one began showing as a foreign config. I cleared the foreign config and replaced the drive, but now on my array, I'm showing 3 drives and 2 slots marked "Missing". How can I bring this array back online and good to go without deleting and creating a new VD? Thanks in advance...

IMPORT
ONLY used when an array is OFFLINE (non-functional/failed). If you have a 3-disk RAID 5 and two disks are foreign (or one foreign and one failed or missing), the RAID 5 is dead/offline. You must import in this case. If you replace a failed/foreign drive with a new one, and the new one is flagged as foreign and you import, you will corrupt your data.
CLEAR
ONLY used when an array is ONLINE (up and running, functional). If you have a 3-disk RAID 5 and one disk is showing foreign (meaning that disk is also offline), you must CLEAR it (whether it is a replacement disk or an original), then assign it as a hot-spare.
Typically once you clear the foreign configuration, you do not get a second chance - the drive is then in a Ready state.

Which Build and what drives for a raid? One for Harm Maybe :)

Hi, I've been waiting to get an evga sr-2 but they are so hard to get a hold of at the moment I was starting to wonder whether I should go for something like this in the meantime. http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-031-OB
I always wait longer and do big upgrades instead so am willing to wait another month if necessary to get my hands on an sr-2 but was looking at Harms Beast spec on the premiere pro benchmarks and noticed he gets pretty impressive results from a single i7
Just wondering if overclocked sr-2 running at 4.2Ghzplus is worth twice the money.
Also, No matter which board i end up with the first step will be using their onboard raid to run a raid 5 array with 6 discs. (they don't do raid 3)
Eventually I plan to get an areca card but don't know what drives to use. WD Re4's (2Tb) seem to be pretty good for raid and critical use for at £200 they are a lot more than WD blacks. Just wondering what to do for as it's alot of money especially if I decide to get an areca card and use raid 30?
Thanks, Michael.

Michael,
As you can see, Chris' top rank in the PPBM5 Benchmark reflects the enormous power of dual X5680's. Admitted, it is much more expensive than a similarly overclocked single i7-980X, like Studio North. However there is a distinct advantage of a dual Xeon system, in the sense that you will have 12 DIMM slots and can easily use the very affordable 2 GB sticks to get 24 GB, which saves a lot in comparison to 6 x 4GB sticks on a X58 mobo. Or you can expand memory to 48 GB should you desire so.
You may have seen this review already, but in case you missed it, look here: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2010/08/17/evga-classified-sr-2-review/1
If you consider that there will be further improvements in multi-threading and in some exporter modules in CS Next, the advantage of more cores and more memory will probably increase over a 980X.
As for disks, the WD RE4's are a great choice. Depending on your storage requirements, and your timing for an Areca controller, it may make sense to start with the 1 TB version or the 1.5 TB version and then later add another 6 x 1 TB or 6 x 1.5 TB. That will give you a 12 disk array with the same gross capacity as 6 x 2 TB for approximately the same amount, but because of the larger array will give you better performance or in the case of 1.5 TB models even more storage capacity. I would advise against the Caviar Blacks because of the TLER issue.
Planning ahead for the Areca, you have to keep in mind a way to transfer your data from a mobo array to an Areca array. You may have to first create a new 6 disk array on the Areca, copy your data from the mobo array to the new Areca array, then move one disk at a time from the mobo to the Areca and define it first as a hot-spare and then expand the array. You have to do that for all the existing disks, but that way you have no problems in getting all your data on the new array intact. I probably would use a Raid3 or Raid5 with one hot-spare, so you end up with 11 x Raid3/5 plus one hot-spare, or a 12 x Raid6.
Hope this helps.

Upgrading 250GB drives to 750GB drives

We have an XServe RAID that is a few years old. It has 8 drive modules with 250GB drives and 6 blanks. We'd like to upgrade all available slots to 750GB drives.
Can I fill the blanks with 750GB drive modules and fill the existing modules with new 750GB drives and rebuild from there? I have read that I need to update the firmware to recognize the larger capacity. What about the controller module and fiber card. Will it work with the existing pieces or will I need to upgrade those as well?
Any other suggestions are welcome.
Thanks!
Stephe.
XServe G5 and Intel
6 Cluster Nodes
2 RAIDS
Bunch o' G5s and Mac Pros
HD Video, 3D Animation and Web Production House

Camelot wrote:
Any advice on types and brands for the drives?
Apple.
Apple doesn't manufacture drives. Last I checked only Seagate makes 750GB PATA drives, everyone else in the business seems to make only SATA drives that size or bigger.
Unfortunately nobody makes 1TB drives that are PATA, so it looks like the current crop of the drives mean the end of the line for the XServe RAID in terms of capacity.
While I have heard of people who've replaced the bundled drives with larger ones, with some success,
the blank drive bays have simple blanking plates - i.e. do not have the electronics required to actually
support a drive.
Apple do not sell empty drive modules (with the electronics, but no drive), which makes it difficult
to expand the array other than by getting drive modules from Apple.
Correct. However, if you upgrade from a system with 14 250GB drives, you have all the mounting hardware you need, you just have to swap the drives in the carriers.
If you just bought new drive modules for Apple for the current blanks, and opted to manually
upgrade the existing drives on your own you'd end up with mixed drives (vendor, models and
firmware) which, at best, will result in degraded performance.
This has not been an issue in the past. After all, when you have a drive failure, you end up often with different drive models and firmware versions, too. E.g. Hitachi discontinued the 250GB drive model that was originally in the XServe RAID, and replaced it with a different 250GB drive in their line up.
You had no choice but to mix models if a single drive failure required swapping drives. (To make matters worse, the new drive, while faster, was a tiny bit smaller, which really caused head aches!)
Even though the drives sourced from Apple are more expensive than you can find similarly-sized
drives elsewhere, you get server-grade drives, burned in, with known/standard firmware, and
vendor support by taking the Apple route.
Sorry, that's FUD without basis. No drive manufacturer will run a special assembly line for "Apple grade" drives. Worse, you buy a drive module from Apple, and you have at best a 1 year warranty. You buy the drives from Hitachi or Seagate directly, you have a three or five year warranty.
If you try to use the manufacturer's warranty on Apple sourced drives, the manufacturers will not honor it, because the drives are OEM drives sold at a big discount to Apple, which means they don't give any warrantee beyond what Apple gives.
In terms of what you get for the money, both in absolute price, and in terms of warranty, is much better if you get bare drives straight from the manufacturer than going with Apple's drives.
Without knowing your business I can't tell you what to do, but for me I can't bear the thought of
telling my clients that I lost their data because I opted to save $100 on a few hard drives.
If you're selling to clients, of course, Apple drives are better: there's more profit in those, because they are not a commodity like bare bones drives, but a brand-name special order item.
(that's not to say that third-party drives are necessarily less reliable than those sourced from
Apple, more that being able to say you had a problem even though you were using vendor
supported and provided parts goes a long way ).
Apple's support in regards to drives that fail after a year is non-existent, except if you get the $999 AppleCare contract, but that means you can buy quite a few replacement drives to cover that, and it's still only 3 years coverage, vs. 5 years for the drives direct from the manufacturer...
Obviously Apple needs to make a profit, and inventory, logistics, etc. for parts are expensive, so you pay in essence for the convenience of getting a module you can just shove into the unit and be done. No need to mess with screwdrivers, etc.
Ronald

I am a newb! How do i connect 2 or more computers to a single a drive?

Okay this is what i am trying to accomplish...
I want to link 2 or more of my macs to a single a drive(or i guess a raid not really sure what that even is lol) I do HD editing so i know that it need to be fast. I dont really want to spent anymore money than i have to. I have heard things about a NAS and RAID. I am not really sure what it all means. I basically just need to know what software(os x, os x server, idk) i will need and what hardware (cables, cards, drives, computer)
I have a 466 mhz g4 that i dont use, a QS dual 1 ghz G4, 1.6 ghz g5, dual 1.8 ghz g5 it might be (2.0), quad-core macpro, powerbook. and multiple firewire external hard-drives.
I understand that in a NAS that one computer is a dedicated server which one could i use. and how do set it up with software and hardware.

yes, you can connect 2 phones without damaging the FXS port of the SPA3102 if their total REN will not exceed 3 -- this device can handle up to 3 REN (Ringer Equivalency Number)
With most phones, the REN for the phone is printed on the phone itself (often in very small print, however). Assuming you can find the REN of each phone (which usually varies between 0.1 and 2.0, depending upon phone type), just add up the numbers (from all phone line connected devices)
| isolate! isolate! isolate! |

I wish to migrate the software of my operating system into my raid disk array

I have not found anything
from Intel
orMicrosoft software to migrate my operating system and I was told that there were a couple other companies to
software to move my O.S. off the solid-state drive that it's on and put it on my RAID 5 array that's installed in my computer and working could you please give me a little adviceI have
software for conventional migration and will not work for this application.

Something here may help.
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/data-center/how-to-restore-a-system-image-in-windows-server-2012/
Regards, Dave Patrick ....
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties or guarantees , and confers no rights.

Adding Drives to a RAID 5

I have a XSERVE RAID with 4 250GB drives configured as a RAID 5. We're starting to get low on space so I'd like to expand the capacity by adding some drives.
Is there a specific number of drives I need to add or can I add 1, 2 or 3 drives as long as they're on the same controller?
Mac OS X (10.4.6)

This is incorrect.
The Xserve RAID does not ship with any file system on it whatsoever. It is just disks, set up in a RAID configuration that you specify.
You can format the RAID volume as HFS+ if you connect it to a Mac. You can format it with NTFS if you connect it to a Windows machine. Or ZFS on a Solaris box, etc.
What you CANNOT easily do is grow a volume. Period.
Buy the RAID with 7 drives, or with 14 drives. If you buy a "2 TB" one (what is this -- 4x500 GB drives? Recall that is about 1.3 TB of usable space in RAID 5)... plan on reformatting if you add 3 drives later. Plan on it. I mean it: plan on it. Growing the RAID is complicated and unless you want to set up a concatenated RAID set, it's what you MUST do to grow the volume.
Again, my advice could not be clearer (search back as well, I've stated this many, many times): Buy the RAID with 7 drives, or with 14, and NEVER plan on growing the RAID by adding drives WITHOUT reformatting. Period.

How to install Windows XP on a single SATA drive?

I am trying without much success to use a single Maxtor 200 GB SATA drive in a non-RAID configuration running Windows XP Home SP 2+. I obtained documentation from the MSI Download site that explains how to do such a thing. However ...
First, out of the box the Drivers & Utilities CD is useless -- can't read it, simply hangs the CD drive.
Second, the drivers from the Download site (IATA_ICH5R) return "incompatible hardware. software not supported on this chipset" messages.
So where do I get the drivers required to install Windows XP on a single SATA drive (to use at point F6 in the Windows XP installation)?
Regards,
Bob (ll1951md)
P.S. Configuration ...
865PE/G Neo2-P (MS-6728) w/ Intel Extreme Graphics 2, Realtek ALC655 Audio
2 GB Corsair Dual Channel DDR Memory
Intel P4 3.0e GHz Processor
1 Maxtor 200 GB SATA HD
1 HDS 120 GB ATA HD

Thanks for the tips. I was able to install Windows XP and boot from the SATA drive by using these options and setting the appropriate boot device selections...
Legacy Mode
ATA Configuration - PATA only
SATA Keep enabled - yes
PATA Keep enabled - yes
PATA channel selection - both
Combined Mode Option - S-ATA 1st Channel
S-ATA Ports Definition - P0 - 3rd./P1 - 4th.
I just wasn't sure if I was really getting "SATA" performance, etc. without specific drivers.
Thanks again.
Bob (ll1951md)

Migrating a Single 250GB Drive to 2TB RAID 5 Array

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