Mirrored Hard Drives

Hello Everyone
I have 2 Macs, iMac and MBP i do alot of photography, video and graphics. I often find my self working between 2 computers and several external drives. My biggest problem is through all of that my files get scattered throughout the different hard drives. Im currently creating a folder structure i want to be on all my computers and available to be viewed by other family members in my house on their Macs.
So here is basically what im looking to do.
Have my 2 computers share files in real time if possible or over night sync the changes that have been made so they have the same files in the same places. I would also like each of my computers to back up their structers to external drives "ill use time machine for that i guess"
The next thing is i dont want all of the files to sync to everyone else's computer but id like them to have read only permissions so as they dont accidentally delete stuff.
To me sounds very possible, and im not sure how on earth something like this wouldn't be available thanks!

The only way to do this is to network share certain folders, and hard link to the network share. One computer will act as a server serving up the folders for the other computers to connect to. That computer should also then be backing up any changes to those shared folders.
That of course means the server should always be up and running. If someone tries to write or read from the computer when it is not, data corruption can happen. Being especially vigilent about your backup of the shared drive is important*:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html

Similar Messages

How do I erase an older Western Digital 1TB mirrored hard drive? Newer drives can be erased via a WD Utility, but the WD site says to "ask Apple" about the older ones.

I have a MacBook Pro with OSX 10.7.5. The hard drive is approx. six years old - a Western Digital for Macs, mirrored with 1TB on each half.
Because the drive is "infected" with Time Machine backups that I can't erase, I have removed all important files from the drive and now want to wipe it clean. I've done this with new drives, via the WD Utility that came with the drive, but the older drive doesn't have such a utility. The WD site only has a protocol for PCs.
I find nothing on the Apple site itself. Can you community members help??
(I've tried various ways of deleting the Time Machine backups, but nothing has worked. The instructions for that, which I read on a community support site, were too advanced for me to understand. A Mac IT guy tried to erase the backups, but he didn't know how either. So that is why I'm erasing the drive totally. I've learned my lesson and have a dedicated Time Machine drive now.)

Please be clear:
This is a mirrored RAID that you use as the startup disk?
You now have a different startup disk and wish to erase the RAID mirror?
Do you wish to continue using the RAID for backup?
If all you want to do is erase the RAID to get rid or the Time Machine backups, the use Disk Utility to erase the mirror disk mounted on the Desktop.

Time Machine backup mirrors Hard Drive, but doesn't back up

I noticed a few days ago that my external hard drive, on which I store my Time Machine backups, only mirrors the content of my Hard Drive instead of actually backing up. I don't know if it has anything to do with that fact that I finally recently upgraded from OS Snow Leopard to OS Lion, which is the last OS upgrade my late 2007 model MacBook will accept. I'm using 10.7.5, build 11G63
I can drag files from my Time Machine backup folders going back to Feb. 22, 2013 on to my desktop, but they do not copy. Instead, they move out onto the desk top from the Time Machine folders and the same files disappear from the equivalent hard drive file folders, as if they had been dragged to the desk top. Likewise, any file I drag from any hard drive folder to the desk top disappears from the equivalent Time Machine folder. Conversely, files moved from the desk top to either a Time Machine folder or its hard drive equivalent show up in the other.
I don't know the significance of the Feb. 22 date, since I upgraded to OS Lion sometime after that.
Any suggestions?

I solved this myself. I found that, after upgrading to Mac OS Lion from Snow Leopard, some of the aliased folders in my Time Machine backup hard drive are not locked, but the regular folders are locked. Apparently this is new in Lion. (As I mentioned above, my MacBook is too old to upgrade to Mountain Lion.) I had based my query above on my ability to delete things from some aliased folders on my backup hard drive. Fortunately, they are locked in the equivalent non-aliased folders.

Setting UP a Mirror Hard Drive

OK so I have a Leopard Server that has 3 hard drives, so I thought that I would set it up so that it mirror's in case of hard drive failure... But apparently I am not smart enough to do this on my own so I'm calling out for help... Could someone please dummy proof this for me... :-
Specs.
Mac OS 10.5.6
Xserve G5
2 GHz
5 GB RAM
It says no RAID installed
Main Server HD = 500 GB
Backup #1 HD = 250 GB
Backup #2 HD = 250 GB
USB External Drive = 1 TB
I'm also in the process of setting up Synchronize Pro that was just recently purchased for backing up...
Greatly appreciate the help...

Your only mirror option is to mirror the two 250GB drives. You'll then need need to either re-install or clone your OS onto that mirror and reboot.
This can all be done via the GUI (Disk Utility.app) or the command line (diskutil), whichever you prefer.
To use the GUI, select one of the 250GB drives, then select the RAID tab.
Drag each of the 250GB drives to the RAID set list and make sure the RAID Type is set to mirror.
Once that's done you can use the restore tab to clone the boot drive to the new mirror. You can do this live, but if the server is busy you would be better off booting from the install DVD and running Disk Utility from there (avoids issues of trying to clone active files).

Using FTP to Mirror hard drives across different platforms

Hello,
I was wondering if anyone knows of an easy to use program that can mirror 2 external hard drives over the internet securely. My friend and I have been attempting to set up a system where my external is backed up to his computer and his to mine so that both hard drives are identical. He has winxp and I have OSX.
I have done some research and this seems to be the easiest program that I can find:
https://www.foldershare.com/info/aboutFoldershare.php?
However, it states that it only supports g series macs and I am planning to update to an intel based mac in the very near future. (I would have done it already but apple is taking their sweet time updating the mini to c2d!)
I have come across some other programs/applications that claim to do this such as:
http://dirvish.org/
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/%7Ebcpierce/unison/
They all appear to be fairly techie to figure out and/or have week cross platform abilities. Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for taking the time.

"However, it states that it only supports g series macs"
It should still work on Intel based Macs through the Rosetta translation engine.

Realtime mirrored hard drive image

here is what i want to do: i have an external firewire drive that i created a partition on that is the same size as my internal hard drive. i want that drive to be a mirror image of my internal drive. i dont want time machine, that keeps backups, i want a realtime backup, so if i delete a file on my internal drive, it will also be erased from the external drive. id also like some way for the external drive to synchronize to the current state of my internal drive when i have been working with the drive unplugged and then plug it back in.
i hope this is clear... is this possible at all?

Not a good idea. First, you cannot add an existing startup volume to a RAID set. You would have to erase your startup volume, create the RAID, then reinstall OS X. Second, an external drive is slower than in internal drive, so the RAID would function only as fast as the slower drive in the RAID set. Third, the external drive would have to be permanently connected and operational in order to boot from it. You would be better off simply using the external drive as a backup for the internal drive.
See the following to learn more about RAIDs:
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?

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.

How to create mirror backup of my Time Machine external hard drive

I am running Time Machine back ups for my MacPro with OS 10.8.5, purchased in 2008. I am saving the Time Machine back ups to an OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro 2TB external hard drive. I have a second 2TB external hard drive and would like to mirror what's backing up to the first 2TB external hard drive. I feel that it gives me better odds if I plug the hard drive in one day and it isn't recognized, or some calamity happens to my computer and everything goes downhill from there, which seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Currently I store the external hard drives in a safe in my home between uses. They don't spend 24/7 hooked to my computer.
I would like to know that I always have two copies of the same Time Machine back up on hand.
Thanks,

Drives fail. Often in the first six months, and after that, they may last 5-6 years. Or not. A weak (not just bad) sector block is usually the best indication. Having spare drives on hand should be a must, and rotate primary drives to backup or archive every two years maybe after giving them a long erase - to ease your fears and hopefully find the worst possible error.
RAID6 is useful for holding large video catalogues and projects - and then mirror your RAID6 to another RAID6.
SoftRAID 5 http://www.softraid.com will scan drives in the background for weak blocks, monitor I/O better for read/write errors (without impacting performance is important) and can be well worth its $140 ish price (worth it in tech support alone, too if ever you need it)
A couple programs will write the SMART status to the system log and show the numbers of used and remaining spare blocks. That is something a large study of disk storage revealed. And in today's world, storage needs and the need to "change the light blubs" on a basis before one fails is a must in massive data cloud and big data mining.
Apple's Mac Pro and the RAID card is not "hot swap" capable, though the motherboard in the Classic Mac Pro actually could as designed by Intel. And hot swapping is a handy feature - create a 3 drive mirror array, pull one, you still have two and let SoftRAID do a better rebuild in the background adding a new 3rd mirror drive.
Two drive mirrors are weak and not all that great, in my estimation.
TimeMachine is there to get people to at least have a automatic ish do it and forget it, hopefully, versus none at all. A good beginning. It also turns 8 this September and has slowly, gradually, hopefully, matured. I might buy Disk Warrior 5 if only to check the backup catalogue for integrity though at $99 a waste for most and better spent on another backup drive or something. But you never want to be in need of Data Rescue 4, another $99 product.

Re: Unable to rebuild in mirrored RAID after hard drive failure BOOTCAMP

CHRIIIIIIIS!!!
Problem!
first off, you're a genius. thanks for helping everyone around here.
Second.
I just installed Mavericks on my MacBook Pro 2012, and it broke Bootcamp.
I have a 750GB hard drive and it has 2 partitions, on for Mac and one for BootCamp, nice and simple.
When I open Disk Utility I get this....
It really broke the partition, it used to be named "BOOTCAMP"
Any help would be appreciated and yes i know how to use terminal, if that helps you.
Frank

Awesome, this just saved my sanity, thank you!
I was about to go totally insane when I couldn't find the option to add a new drive to the existing RAID mirror and then rebuild the whole thing.
In the Apple help, it just says "go to RAID" "click rebuild" - but this is absolutely not how it works!
Adding the new, empty drive by drag and drop wasn't mentioned anywhere - in addition to that I have never seen a program that has certain functions which can only be accessed by drag and drop.
Also the hard disk utility doesn't look like drag and drop GUI at all.
It was really easy as soon as I read this thread, so thanks again, this totally saved my day!

PowerMac G4 "Mirrored Drive Doors" 2x1GHz Hard Drive Upgrade

I have a PowerMac G4 "Mirrored Drive Doors" 2x1GHz with one 75 GB PATA hard drive.
I want to install two 500 GB PATA drives.
1) How is this done while transferring all the data from the 75 GB drive to the new drives?
2) Is a master/slave configuration the only option for two PATA drives?
Regards,
David

I prefer not to cut pin 28 wire so I’ll go with the master/slave (device 0/device1) configuration.
I do not know to what you refer. I have two 300 gig drives in my MDD, connected without modification to the cable (to which the original 80 gig was connected). The drive jumpers are set as cable select. Repeat - no modification of the cable was ever done. In fact, but this is from memory, I believe I could not boot from drives that were jumpered as "master" / "slave".
Can anyone confirm the number of PATA drives that will fit in a MDD?
As shipped, the MDD is wired for up to four hard drives. There are two cables and each will let you connect two drives. One of the buses is slower than the other - the faster one is where the original drive is located.
Are the bays under the CD/DVD drive set-up for SCSI drives?
No. You need a scsi card to use scsi drives.

Fan Speeds, and Mirror Raid with New Internal Hard Drive

Regards,
I recently installed and formatted a new hard drive in my PowerMac dual 2.3 ghz computer and I have a few questions.
1. Now that there are two hard drives do I need to do anything to ensure that the fan on my computer can keep them cool? I think the fans I have in the hard drive bay is enough, but I do not know if they will automatically set themselves to run properly. I can monitor the fan speeds and temp from iStat pro, but do not remember what level the temperature was before installing the new one.
2. Given that my new drive is a SeaDisc hard drive and the older one is a Western Digital, will this cause any problems in creating a mirrored RAID. I believe that both are 7200rpm drives, and my second hard drive is a little larger (I will just have unused space after making the RAID). I am concerned with the fact that these two drives are from two different manufactures. Will this cause problems or drastically slow down the reading and writing of data? Has anyone else experienced problems in making a mirrored RAID from two hard drives that are not exact matches, and even come from different manufacturers?
Any advice will help.
Thanks
earpshmael

Hi earpshmael;
Generally when creating RAID arrays the more similar the drive the less problems you tend to have.
The real question is exactly why do you want or need RAID?
I think so many people seem to think that RAID will solve all of their problem. I hate to tell you the bad news but it will not.
Generally there are to varieties of RAID available using the software RAID built into OS X which are 0 and 1. RAID 0 or stripling is generally for moving large file rapidly for applications like HD video. It usually doesn't help the OS. RAID 1 or mirroring is for protection from drive failure. It is not a valid backup solution.
Allan

Publish to hard drive mirroring folder structure

Hello,
The publish to hard drive feature was one of my most anticipated additions in LR3. I use this to maintain a backup of all my images with the edits baked in, which offers a great level of security.
My only disappointment is that it flattens the folder structure. Backing up an entire catalogue to a single folder is less than convenient, so I ended up creating multiple publish folders in order to keep the file counts reasonable.
But the ideal would be the ability for the publish feature to mirror the folder structure, creating a backup that is organised just how I like it.
Kind regards,
Tom

threeshinyapples wrote:
The publish to hard drive feature was one of my most anticipated additions in LR3. I use this to maintain a backup of all my images with the edits baked in, which offers a great level of security.
My only disappointment is that it flattens the folder structure. Backing up an entire catalogue to a single folder is less than convenient, so I ended up creating multiple publish folders in order to keep the file counts reasonable.
But the ideal would be the ability for the publish feature to mirror the folder structure, creating a backup that is organised just how I like it.
You seem to be using the wrong tool for the job of backing up, why not use ChronoSync on Mac or Clone on PC to back up your folders [and structure] to a location of your choosing independently of LR? They can also back up any folders like your preferences or catalogue not just your images and do so according to a schedule that you designate.
Both are very easy to use and can back up single folders or entire hard drives or anything in between. I also find them very handy for location work as these programmes always keep my backup ext. HD in sync with my main ext HD without my having to think about it.

Jumpy mouse and shut-downs on G4 mirror door when putting to sleep or just random shut down after install of new 2nd internal WD IDE 320 gig hard drive, OS 10.4.11, orig HD is WD 80, RAM = 2 gig. Help!

Jumpy mouse and shut-downs on G4 mirror door when putting to sleep or just random shut down, is now occuring after install of new 2nd internal WD IDE 320 GB hard drive, running OS 10.4.11, orig HD is WD 80 GB, RAM = 2 gig. Help!

Hi Ted,
At this point I think you should get Applejack...
At this point I think you should get Applejack...
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/15667/applejack
Ignore the MacKeeper ad no matter what else you decide.
After installing, reboot holding down CMD+s, (+s), then when the DOS like prompt shows, type in...
applejack AUTO
Then let it do all 6 of it's things.
At least it'll eliminate some questions if it doesn't fix it.
The 6 things it does are...
Correct any Disk problems.
Repair Permissions.
Clear out Cache Files.
Repair/check several plist files.
Dump the VM files for a fresh start.
Trash old Log files.
First reboot will be slower, sometimes 2 or 3 restarts will be required for full benefit... my guess is files relying upon other files relying upon other files! :-)
Disconnect the USB cable from any Uninterruptible Power Supply so the system doesn't shut down in the middle of the process.
Just sits there occupying very little space & never interfering, unless you need to invoke it in Single User Mode.
After installing, reboot holding down CMD+s, (+s), then when the DOS like prompt shows, type in...
applejack AUTO
Then let it do all 6 of it's things.
At least it'll eliminate some questions if it doesn't fix it.
The 6 things it does are...
Correct any Disk problems.
Repair Permissions.
Clear out Cache Files.
Repair/check several plist files.
Dump the VM files for a fresh start.
Trash old Log files.
First reboot will be slower, sometimes 2 or 3 restarts will be required for full benefit... my guess is files relying upon other files relying upon other files! :-)
Disconnect the USB cable from any Uninterruptible Power Supply so the system doesn't shut down in the middle of the process.
Just sits there occupying very little space & never interfering, unless you need to invoke it in Single User Mode.

Jaguar on iMac treats USB thumb drive as mirror of hard drive - help

When I plug a standard usb thumb drive into my imac, OSx treats it like a mirror of the hard disk. Yet if I take the thumb drive to a PC it displays all the files as expected. What gives?
Thanks!

Hi, that is weird. How large is the thumb drive? How large is your hard drive?
Best,
~FifthWheel

Mirror raid array -hard drive replacement specs

What drive spec to I used to select the replacement hard drive? My current drive is not easy to find. Now using a samsung spinpoint sp25045c.

I have had similar problems in the past with Snow Leopard. I can list some command line instructions to do it manually.
sudo diskutil appleRAID repairMirror /Volumes/nameofvolume /dev/disk2
The above will try and repair the RAID mirror by adding /dev/disk2 (or whatever number your new disk is). If it is the boot drive you are repairing and it is called ServerHD then it would be /Volumes/ServerHD
If the repair will not work then the next thing to try is to change the original drive back to a non-RAID volume by doing the following
sudo diskutil appleRAID delete /Volumes/nameofvolume
then you can convert it back to a RAID again via the command line. There is probably more than one way to do this but the following is definitely a non-destructive method that can be done while actually running from the original drive.
sudo diskutil appleRAID enable mirror /dev/disk1
(where the number is the original drive)
sudo diskutil appleRAID add member /dev/disk2 /Volumes/nameofvolume
(where the number is the new replacement drive)
sudo diskutil appleRAID update AutoRebuild 1 /Volumes/nameofvolume
It would be a good idea to read the Unix man page before trying this
man diskutil

Mirrored Hard Drives

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