Mirrored RAID

Hello,
I have a RAID with 14 x 250GB Drive. Its a RAID 5 accross all drives and we used disk utility to mirror the arrays.
Drive 14 showed an amber warning light las friday....so we replaced it with a new Apple Drive module of the same capacity.
Our problem is we can't mount the volume and retrieve the data. Any suggestions on how we can access the data.
Thanks.
Ben

If each side is using RAID 5 you shouldn't have been affected by the drive failure - the system should have kept running.
What does Disk Utility.app show? Does it see the XServe RAID at all

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How to recover data from failed drive that's part of mirrored raid

Hi Guys,
hope to get help from someone knowledgeable out there. I have a macpro and recently experienced a failed drive. I set up that failed drive as part of a mirrored raid, this set is not my primary drive and so my computer is stilling up and running but now am wondering how I access the data from the mirrored drive. Should the mirrored drive automatically mount on my desktop whereby I would be able to access the files? This is my first drive failure and I was under the impression having a mirror would duplicate my data and allow me to access it in situations like this. I'm a bit of novice in this area and not sure if the data is truly on the "mirror" or if there are things I need to do.
I launched disk utility and was able to see the mirrored drive and I selected "mount" drive but it would not mount; I then selected "verify" and got "unrecognizeable filesystem" Is this normal? Am I suppose do something to get access to the mirrored drive? Do I install a new drive in place of the failed drive and expect the raid to rebuild automatically whereby I then see the data?
Your help is much appreciated.

Even with a mirror, you still need a backup.
Along with Disk Utility, you still need 3rd party (TechTool Pro 5, Disk Warrior 4.1.1+).
And if you like to use RAID and esp mirror RAID, consider
http://www.softraid.com which is a step above (the pdf guide, manual you can download and they have a demo, so worth the read). SoftRAID can also import/convert an Apple RAID to its own format which has been known to recover drives and data.

How do I add a new drive to a degraded MIRRORED RAID set?

My mirrored raid said it was degraded because one of the drives had a failure.
Today I unplugged the faulty drive and inserted a new one.
So far so good.
I erased the new drive.
Then I went into disk utility and followed the instructions in the help about RAID but I cannot see how to add this new drive to the RAID.
I'm confused.
1) The data is all on the RAID (the good, original slice) so can I add a new slice?
2) how do I do it?
Many thanks

I don't recommend the Apple hardware RAID card, and it doesn't work with off the shelf drives. If you are using drives in RAID, first make sure they are RAID Edition or lacking that Enterprise. Same make/model/firmware.
If using Seagate, avoid anything prior to 7200.12 series. If WD the RE2/3 series.
Rebuilds are slow, and one reason why I recommend 3 drives, even if you lose one you are covered still.
Of course just having two backups per volume is more important and comes first; mirrors are great for live editing and recording (audio) but otherwise... I'd stick to stripe and redundant backups. Only if you need 24/7. Otherwise, forget mirror.

Recovering data from a damaged mirrored RAID

I have a puzzle I'm hoping you can help me with: I have a mirrored RAID array in a MD G4 which is not mounting (since going to Apple for replacing the logic board).
I have tried connecting both drives to a Forensic FireWire dock to no avail; they show up as "spare" and not as a "slice".
Any suggestions?
Yours truly,
-Tom
FYI - Below are the results of "diskutil checkRAID" and "diskutil list" on this G4:
#diskutil checkRAID
RAID SETS
Name: Stuff
Unique ID: 58607662-4550-11D8-84ED-000393D28706
Type: Mirror
Status: Offline
Device Node: disk4
Apple RAID Version: 1
# Device Node UUID Status
1 disk1s4 AF8C5D0C-24F3-4EA3-A123-5F5E22FA6D65 Spare
0 disk2s3 027E86C9-88CE-4973-9984-C7A010C422FF Spare
2 Unknown Missing/Damaged
2 Unknown Missing/Damaged
#diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: type name size identifier
0: Applepartitionscheme *114.5 GB disk0
1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 KB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Backup 114.5 GB disk0s2
/dev/disk1
#: type name size identifier
0: Applepartitionscheme *149.1 GB disk1
1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 KB disk1s1
2: Apple_Boot 128.0 MB disk1s3
3: Apple_RAID 148.9 GB disk1s4
/dev/disk2
#: type name size identifier
0: Applepartitionscheme *149.1 GB disk2
1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 KB disk2s1
2: AppleDriverOpenFirmware 512.0 KB disk2s2
3: AppleBootRAID 149.1 GB disk2s3
/dev/disk3
#: type name size identifier
0: Applepartitionscheme *74.5 GB disk3
1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 KB disk3s1
2: Apple_Driver43 28.0 KB disk3s2
3: Apple_Driver43 28.0 KB disk3s3
4: AppleDriverATA 28.0 KB disk3s4
5: AppleDriverATA 28.0 KB disk3s5
6: Apple_FWDriver 256.0 KB disk3s6
7: AppleDriverIOKit 256.0 KB disk3s7
8: Apple_Patches 256.0 KB disk3s8
9: Apple_HFS Laura 74.5 GB disk3s9
/dev/disk4
#: type name size identifier
0: *0.0 B disk4

Razorlance wrote:
Is it possible to just put the old SSD in the new laptop then?
Maybe, I just cannot say with authority. Even if they were physically the same, the question is what OSX is on the older SSD. If it is older than the one the new MBP came with, it will not work.
Ciao.

Creating a mirrored raid set with a hard drive that already has data on it.

I have a hard drive that I keep my photos on, and want to create a mirrored raid set that includes this drive, with its data, and another drive. How can I do this without erasing the drive with my photos on them? I am running 10.7.5 if that matters.
Thanks for any help.

Creating a Mirrored RAID reformats the drive and loads a substantial RAID driver and some tables onto it. When completed, the drive is inherently a member of a RAID set, and will continue to be so even if moved to another Mac.
because of this, you cannot create a RAID directly on a standard drive that contains data already in any reasonable, risk-free way.
To amplify what The Hatter has said above, Mirrored RAID is not Backup. Mirrored RAID only increases mean time to repair to keep a drive failure from becoming a Data Disaster. You still need a Backup. Mirrored RAID does not protect you from deletions from user error, crazy software, or "just because".
I run a mirrored RAID in my Home Server, which contains all the Users files for everyone in the Household. And I also recognize (after being burned by it) that Mirrored RAID is helpful, but not a sufficient Backup by itself. I back up the Users Drive automatically to an External drive using Time Machine. [So what I am advising is not just theoretical, I am living what I am advising.]
With WD Black 1TB and other very good drives in the under US$100 range, there is really no reason NOT to invest in several drives for such an undertaking.

Disk Utility gives error and does not rebuild mirrored RAID

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

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

Maximum drive size for mirrored RAID

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

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

Mirrored RAID: MediaKit reports block size error

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

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

Mirrored RAID taking too long for Data Rebuild

I have created a RAID 1 (Mirrored RAID) using Disk Utility in my Mac Pro. I have used 2 x 4TB WD Enterprise Grade HDDs. I copied 10 gb data on to this 4 TB RAID volume. Then removed one of the HDDs & installed in my other Mac Pro. It mounted as normal HDD & showed all the data that I had copied. To check if Disk Utility will rebuild the data, I deleted some part of this data (2 GBs out of 10 GBs) & installed this drive back in the system on which I had Created this RAID volume.
Initially I was surprised to find that Deleted data is now absent on this RAID volume. But on Launching Disk Utility it started rebuilding data on RAID volume.
BUT for Rebuilding 2 GB data estimated time shown by system was 9 hrs.
Is this NORMAL?
I intend to fill this 4 TB RAID volume with approximately 3.5 TB Data. In case one of the drive fails, how long should it take for Disk Utility to rebuild this amount of Data?
Is there any alternative way of speeding up this process?
Will Apple's RAID card help?
All your suggestions will be appreciated.
Thanks

I know this is an old thread but I'd be interested in what you came up with for a solution.
Here's my RAID journey thus far.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/25119317#25119317
Again, a gig of info and its taking 1 day 10 hours.
I hope theres a solution somewhere.
Drew

Mirrored Raid on Startup Drive?

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

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

Mirrored RAID drive removal.

I have 3 drives in my Xserve G5. 1 is 80GB and running as the system drive. the other 2 are 500GB drives which are both mirrored. I want to sacrifice the data redundancy and gain the extra 500GB for storage. I do not have a location to store the 400+GB of data that is stored on the mirrored RAID while I delete the raid. Is there a way to delete the RAID and then recover the data from one of the 2 drives and then format one of them to be blank? So far from what I am reading deleting a RAID set will make me lose my data I think... I am running the raid through Disk Utility as a software RAID.

Chris
If you delete the RAID1 with disk utility you will lose the data, I can only think of one way to do this-
Pull one of the RAID drives and let the RAID become degraded, data will still be there on one drive
Insert the pulled drive and format with disk utility
Transfer all data from degraded RAID to freshly formatted single drive
Once transferred, delete degraded RAID and format drive to use as extra space
Now doing this without a backup would be very dangerous, and I would suggest that all data should be moved to another drive before doing any of this.
I use software RAID configs all the time and would not recommend that anyone run a server without some form of redundancy, they have saved mine and my client's bacon many times.
Regards
Ed

Increasing Size of Mirrored RAID

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

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

Mirro Raid can you use a single 4TB disk with 2 partitions for mirrored raid ?

Hello,
I have a new 4TB hardrive.
After lots of reading, i was thinking that i could partician the drive to 2 (2TB) Then create mirror raid.
Essentially thinking that i would have photos on one of the (2TB particions) and they would mirror on the other ?? as a double copy storage.
I can partician okay and the try to drag the two particians onto the "mirror raid set" and ithe following message displays :
"Can't add Seagate expansion disk" to the raid set because another volume from this disk is already part of the RAID set"
I'm now thinking i need to purchase another 4tb hardrive for this to work ?
Or if you "mirror raid set" is it actually particioning the drive and creating a copy ?
Forgive me... i'm not really very up skilled with disk utility, and basically just don't understand.
Looking forward to some help and advise
warm regards Tracy Gr

It doesn't make any sense to mirror on the same drive. The idea behind mirroring is that should one disk in the raid set fail your data is safe on the other disk. Mirroring to partitions, if it's even possible, would only bring you disaster when the drive fails because you would lose the complete raid set and all of your data. If you insist on mirroring buy another drive.

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

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

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

Mirrored RAID not mounting/not showing as RAID (Disk Utility)

I have 2 Lacie Firewire Disks set up as a mirrored RAID (created by Disk Utility). I've been using this setup for about a year with no issues. But today I tried mounting the RAID and I got this msg twice (one for each drive)...
"Disk Insertion - The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer."
It then asks if I want to Initialize, Ignore or Eject. If I leave this msg up for a bit it eventually just goes away. But the disks never load.
I opened up Disk Utilities to check and see if the drives were listed and they are, but the RAID is NOT listed. All of the first aid options are greyed out. I tried to mount each disk but they will not mount, I assume because the RAID info has been lost?
Is there a way for me restore the RAID or at least get my info off of the drives? They contain a large photo library that cannot be replaced.
Powerbook G4 Aluminium 1.33gthz Mac OS X (10.4.7)

I never technically fixed the RAID. I used the program Data Rescue mentioned above to look at the drives and pull my data off of them. What I found was one of the drives was in perfect order, and the other drive had stopped recording data MONTHS ago. Basically the RAID became un-paired and stopped working correctly, and only one of the drives was saving the data. It freaked me out at first because the drive I decided to recover first was the one that was missing data. But I then looked at the 2nd drive and it had all my data on it, and I was able to recover it.
Anyway, Data Rescue worked perfectly. Now I just have the drives running independently. But I am staying away from the apple software RAIDs for now, as I did some reading and they seem to not be so trustworthy.
Also, Data Rescue takes quite a bit of time to pull all your data off, especially when you have a couple hundred gigs of data. Hopefully this helps.
Sam

Mirrored Raid as boot disk?

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

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

Mirrored RAID

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