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.

Similar Messages

Is there an option of synching Iphone with two itunes on different mac books ?

is there an option of synching Iphone with two itunes on different mac books ?

You can't sync it to two computers.
But you can plug it into a second computer and add things or take things out of apps (under the app tab, scroll down).
Also you can take photos off on a second computer.
There are a few things you can do on a second computer.
But not a sync.

Server 10.5 on PPC with software RAID not bootable?

I read in this article (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=ServerAdmin/10.5/en/c5sa15.html) that "No PPC-based Macs support booting from software RAID volumes."
I believe that this is not true! From my software dealer i was told there should be no problems to do this. I called Apple and the guy i spoke with also told me that it works fine. I actually now have set up a software RAID1 (PPC G5 2.3Ghz, 2x500GB HD) from wich i boot and it does work!
My question is: Are there any risks to continue running this installation?
/Andreas

One risk is you can't partition an Apple software RAID 1 in Boot and Data volumes so you could potentially have either overwrite "the other". An "overfull" share can damage the system and vice versa.
And write performance can suffer because writes aren't simultaneous (?).
Another risk is the server woun't tell you when one disk fails so if you don't notice when the other one also fails the data on the first one is old (backups are essential as usual). Or if thinking "there is a "failover" disk available" when it too already have failed a while ago (but ofcourse no worse than having only 1 drive and no mirror).
Depending on the cause of failiure, software/glitch or mechanical, the disks can be in different "shape" if you have to try restoring the data.
A good idéa is have an extra drive (firewire?) you backup (one way synch replacing/removing old files/removed files) to every night.

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.

Help with software RAID on system disk

I've been trying to get my OS system disk mirrored using diskutil's software RAID (my server has 2 internal 80GB drives). I did what homework I could and here's where I'm stuck. I'm running 10.4.3.
n506:~ root# uname -a
Darwin n506.local 8.3.0 Darwin Kernel Version 8.3.0: Mon Oct 3 20:04:04 PDT 2005; root:xnu-792.6.22.obj~2/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc
n506:~ root#
According to my research, I needed to boot from an OS disk other than the one I want to mirror, so I installed a second instance of OS X on my second drive, booted on that and ran diskutil enableRAID against the system drive I want to protect. This appeared to work. A new disk device was added (the RAID device) with its only component being the disk I ran enable RAID on. Then I booted from that disk. Here's the problem.
When I run diskutil addToRAID to add the second disk to the raid group, the command does partition the disk the same way the primary is partitioned (according to diskutil list), but the command always fails with this error:
n506:~ root# diskutil addToRAID member disk0 disk2
2006-05-27 23:49:50.012 DiskManagementTool[362] AppleRAIDUpdateSet failed to modify the set (null)
There was an error adding the disk to the RAID (-9960)
n506:~ root#
The system log shows this:
n506:~ root# tail -1 /var/log/system.log
May 27 23:49:50 n506 kernel[0]: AppleRAIDMember::readRAIDHeader: failed, no header signature present on disk0s4.
n506:~ root#
[NOTE: I should add here that, for reasons unknown to me, my system created /dev/disk0 from the drive in the second bay, and /dev/disk1 from the drive in the first bay (the primary disk I'm trying to mirror). I have no idea why OS X set up the devices like that, but I haven't really worried about it]
I've done what research I could and have found no information on this problem. I've tried zero-ing the second disk and rerunning the command (along with rebooting), but I always seem to get this error.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I've been at it for days now and I'm really frustrated.
G5 server Mac OS X (10.4.3)

If anyone out there is interested in this thread, I upgraded to 10.4.6 and tada:
n506:~ root# diskutil addToRAID member disk0 disk2
The disk has been added to the RAID
n506:~ root# diskutil checkRAID
RAID SETS
Name: Disk1
Unique ID: 1CC5982A-B353-438C-A69F-8D66924449C0
Type: Mirror
Status: Degraded
Device Node: disk2
Apple RAID Version: 2
# Device Node UUID Status
1 disk0s3 219611E9-F35F-48A4-BD4F-F56038094613 2% (Rebuilding)
0 disk1s3 0EDD559B-FEE8-4F73-B94D-AF5590AD8BF2 Online
n506:~ root#

MOVED: Upgrading system with existing RAID Array

This topic has been moved to Vista problems.
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=106509.0

The only issue I can foresee is a permissions one. Make sure it is set to "Ignore permissions…" before doing anything. If the drive has specific ownership when you reinstall and you fail to have a matching account to the onwer you'll need to mess with the root account to potentially get back into the drive.
Most unknowingly avoid this issue though using the same username and short username on the reinstalled system.

Can I unstall Office 2011 from a Macbook and re-install the same software on a different Mac/Mackbook?

Hi all,
I’ve looked around Google and here and I can’t find a definitive answer to my question so hopefully you guys can give me some advice
I bought the Office package in 2011 when it was new and installed it on my Macbook. I now plan to buy an iMac for the purpose of studying so I'd like to remove it from my Macbook and transfer it to the new Mac. My Macbook is running on the current highest software (the name escapes me at present, I'm not on it to check) and I assume the Mac will be too. If I were to uninstall everything, would I be able to use the same disc (i.e. same unique code) on the other computer? I believe I only have the 1 disc 1 Mac version so can't have two running with the same software.
Ideally I'd not like to buy another Office package so any advice would be much appreciated. I realise I may not have much choice though...!
Many thanks for your assistance.
Kind Regards,

New Mac's come with OS X 10.8 so you would have to check compatibility of your software with the new OS X versions.
http://roaringapps.com/apps:table
Next you will have to check if the software will install or not on 10.8 from the disk, since the disk is static it can't change for newer OS X versions, however the software itself might run fine if a more recently updated version is downloaded and installed, then the license key entered.
Far as licensing concerns, you will have to check with the developer how to go about deauthorizing, uninstalling and getting a new license key for the new machine or if you can continue to use the existing one.
Most licenses are for one machine, however some can be multiple machine packs.
If you don't exactly need Office specifically to work with other Office users, you can also install the free LibreOffice and it can open your Office files.
The thing with Office is it's widely used in businesses, so if you learned it already then it doesn't make much sense to continue using it and paying money for only personal use.
https://www.libreoffice.org/
LibreOffice is truly cross platform, Linux, OS X and Windows. The files are easily exchange and many Mac users are thrilled using it apparently as the developers have commented a great deal of Mac users are installing it.
If you have trouble installing, it's likely Gatekeeper security that's on the new 10.8 machines, simply hold control key and click on the installer/program and select "Open" and it will remmeber it's a trusted program from then on.

Opening customized software instruments on different Macs

Is there a way to open my custom made software instrument on my friends mac?

Is your "custom made software instrument" just a new preset made with GB's instrument generatorsand saved as a new instrument? Then it sits in your user folder, under User/Library/Application Support/GarageBand/Instrument Library/Track Settings/Software as a .cst file, and you should be able to mail it to your friend. Or if you send him/her a GB project that uses the instrument, they should be able to open the file and use it.

Syncing Keychain with Mobileme on two different Macs

Hi,
I just bought 1password and plan to sync my keychain with my wife's. I am not sure what exactly is going to happen: will we merge all chains in a single big one or will there be two distinct keychains?
What will happen to the login process?
Thank you

Post to the MobileMe forum.

Install Snow Leopard from CD that came with MacBook Pro to different Mac

I need to re-install Snow Leopard on an older MacBook of mine I want to clean out for my wife.
The problem is the Snow Leopard CD (family pack) I purchased months ago is scratched, damaged I believe by an iMac at my business. I want to see if it is possible to install 10.6 from the CD's I recently got with my new MacBook pro. I tried to use them in the MacBook (Intel) I'm trying to hand off to my wife but after I selected the language option I got an error message stating I couldn't install that disc on the computer. It already runs 10.6 so I know it's not an OS issue. Is my MacBook detecting that the installation CD is not the same one that came with it?
Sorry for the wordy post and thanks in advance for any help.

R C-R wrote:
Deviros wrote:
From what i can tell, the media contains only the necessary files to install to that model-specific hardware.
This is both for licensing & technical reasons. Licensing because that disc is licensed for use only with that specific Mac (not model, literally just that Mac) & technical because pre- & post-install scripts & other installer features on grey system discs are designed just for that model.
Curious. I know i've used system restore discs from one machine on another due to the fact that we used to - for reasons unknown to me - allow users to keep their restore discs, at which point they subsequently lost them.
Perhaps it's just older models that allowed it?
No matter. Thanks for the clarification.

Weird issue with software updates in the Mac App Store

The Mac App Store routinely tells me that I have updates available, even though those are the same updates I successfully installed two days earlier. This has been happening consistently for about a month. (I'm on Snow Leopard)

That's only applies to systems that you own or control. In this case as it is your sisters machine you don;t own or control it.
Having said that if you did use your copy of ML on her machine it would be tied into your Apple ID. So anytime the system needed to be upgraded (or restored in the case of a mishap) she would need to use your Apple ID.
How well do you trust her?

Encrypted root on software RAID with 2.6.33

Hi,
I ran an update earlier today on my HTPC, hoping for mantis included in the 2.6.33 kernel to work with my TV-Tuner card, when I recognized that the configuration for software-raids changed.
So I followed the instructions on: Installing with Software RAID or LVM and added the dm_mod module to the MODULES list and replaced raid with mdadm in the HOOKS list resulting in
HOOKS="base udev autodetect sata mdadm usbinput ecrypt filesystems"
After that I successfully rebuilt the kernel and decided it was time for a reboot, but after running the hooks udev, mdadm and encrypt, the screen shows:
Waiting 10 seconds for device /dev/mapper/root ...
root device '/dev/mapper/root' doesn't exist. Attempting to create it.
ERROR: Unable to determine major/minor number of root device '/dev/mapper/roo'.
You are being dropped to a recovery shell.
cat /proc/mdstat shows no configured raid arrays, while assembling them with mdassemble works.
I've tried to boot with and without specifying the raid arrays in grub's kernel line, always with the same result.
Even after booting from a live CD an chrooting in the system to rebuild the kernel - same error message.
Any ideas what I've done wrong?
Best regards

I just checked my mdadm.conf again and compared it with the commands listed here and on the wiki-page.
# cat /etc/mdadm.conf
ARRAY /dev/md0 level=raid1 num-devices=2 metadata=0.90 UUID=13db5ec4:4d02ad99:5be3d20e:87599807
ARRAY /dev/md1 level=raid1 num-devices=2 metadata=0.90 UUID=dda2a7de:a998f117:3f649c17:a7325bd1
ARRAY /dev/md2 level=raid1 num-devices=2 metadata=0.90 UUID=26a15bc5:2345a817:f8c460fb:3d47969b
ARRAY /dev/md3 level=raid1 num-devices=2 metadata=0.90 UUID=be48517f:ebc6eabb:f8463e19:ac167733
# mdadm -D --scan
ARRAY /dev/md0 metadata=0.90 UUID=13db5ec4:4d02ad99:5be3d20e:87599807
ARRAY /dev/md1 metadata=0.90 UUID=dda2a7de:a998f117:3f649c17:a7325bd1
ARRAY /dev/md2 metadata=0.90 UUID=26a15bc5:2345a817:f8c460fb:3d47969b
ARRAY /dev/md3 metadata=0.90 UUID=be48517f:ebc6eabb:f8463e19:ac167733
# mdadm --detail --scan
ARRAY /dev/md0 metadata=0.90 UUID=13db5ec4:4d02ad99:5be3d20e:87599807
ARRAY /dev/md1 metadata=0.90 UUID=dda2a7de:a998f117:3f649c17:a7325bd1
ARRAY /dev/md2 metadata=0.90 UUID=26a15bc5:2345a817:f8c460fb:3d47969b
ARRAY /dev/md3 metadata=0.90 UUID=be48517f:ebc6eabb:f8463e19:ac167733
I'm going to change this and rebuild the kernel image.
Don't know where the difference comes from :/
Okay - the difference comes from running the command in the arch livecd system and in the chrooted environment
But both somehow don't seem to work for me.
When running "mkinitcpio -p kernel26", this is the output:
==> Building image "default"
==> Running command: /sbin/mkinitcpio -k 2.6.33-ARCH -c /etc/mkinitcpio.conf -g /boot/kernel26.img
:: Begin build
:: Parsing hook [base]
:: Parsing hook [udev]
:: Parsing hook [autodetect]
find: "/sys/devices/": Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
:: Parsing hook [sata]
:: Parsing hook [mdadm]
Custom /etc/mdadm.conf file will be used in initramfs for assembling arrays.
:: Parsing hook [usbinput]
:: Parsing hook [encrypt]
:: Parsing hook [filesystems]
:: Generating module dependencies
:: Generating image '/boot/kernel26.img'...SUCCESS
==> SUCCESS
So /etc/mdadm.conf should be used?
lilsirecho wrote:When using mdadm for a raid0 in my machine, the assembly of the raid md0 is made during initrd. A statement for md0 and its 2 drives appears during boot-up.
I can't see any statement about creating any of my mdX devices.
It's just
Running Hook [udev]
Triggering udev uevents ... done
Running hook [mdadm]
Running hook [enrypt]
Waiting 10 seconds for device /dev/md2 ...
Waiting 10 seconds for device /dev/mapper/root ...
Root device '/dev/mapper/root' doesn't exist. Attempting to create it.
ERROR: Unable to determine majo/minor number of root device '/dev/mapper/root'.
You are being dropped to a recovery shell
Last edited by flo (2010-04-21 19:25:03)

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

Failed Software Raid 1, trying to virtualize but getting I/O error failure

I will try to summarize all what has happened and where I'm at now currently:
Server is 2008 R2 (DC, exchange, IIS, SQL, etc) setup originally setup with software RAID 1. At some point years ago the software RAID had failed and the second disk wasn't part of the mirror anymore and it was never fixed in disk management.
Last week the server and wouldn't boot as the primary drive failed. I selected secondary plex during startup just to see if that disk was still functioning, which to my suprise it did boot up but data was years old.
At that point, I inserted Windows 2008 R2 DVD and started System Recovery from previous backup onto secondary plex drive. Once complete, the server was backup and running. Changed the system startup variable to secondary plex so it would
boot that drive if restarted.
I am now trying to virtualize the server using disk2vhd in order to move it onto new hardware, however each time I try it fails with I/O error. I have re-tried multiple times stopping all major services to minimize I/O during disk2vhd, but still errors out
about 3/4 way through. I have run checkdisk and it repaired a few bad sectors on the secondary plex drive, yet still fails during disk2vhd. I am currently running a defrag on the disk as it reported 36% defragmention and will try offline disk2vhd
once complete using System Center VMM 2012 (not R2 as that's been removed - found that out the hard way!).
I'm worried this disk has underlying errors which is why it failed years ago and Windows broke the mirror and why it won't work with online disk2vhd.
I have attached a picture of Disk Management which I find interesting as it shows Disk 0 as unknown (Not Initialized), Disk 1 having errors (can "Reactivate Disk" though unsure if that does anything destructive?), and then a missing disk at the
bottom which I can also reactivate. I'm not sure if restoring the last working backup from disk 0 somehow messed up Disk 1 or confused it? BIOS reports Disk 0 as 0MB so I'm thinking that drive is no good anymore.
I guess what I'm looking for with this post is any answer or suggestion as to why disk2vhd might be failing, whether an offline disk2vhd maybe a better successful option, and what (if anything) I should do in Disk Management with these drives in their current
state. I don't have a replacement 500GB drive for the mirror and I don't plan on getting one as I already have a new Hyper-V 2012 Core server setup to replace this failing server. I just can't seem to get it to virtualize using online disk2vhd and wondering
if it has something to do with the current drive setup/situation?

Hi,
à
I am now trying to virtualize the server using disk2vhd in order to move it onto new hardware, however each time I try it fails with I/O error.
Would you please let me know the complete error message that you can get?
Please refer to following article and check if can help you.
Troubleshooting Disk Management
à
I guess what I'm looking for with this post is any answer or suggestion as to why disk2vhd might be failing, whether an offline disk2vhd maybe a better successful option
In addition, this issue seems to be more related to Disk2vhd. I suggest that you should post the question in
the Disk2vhd forum. I believe we will get a better assistance there.
If anything I misunderstand or any update, please don’t hesitate to let me know.
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
Justin Gu

Unable to move existing installation to software RAID-1 setup

I have an existing Arch Linux amd64 installation which I want to move to a RAID-1 setup.
I followed the following Wiki article:
Arch Linux Wiki - Installing with Software RAID or LVM
with necesary changes applied and some supplemental advice from the equivalent Gentoo Wiki article:
Gentoo Linux Wiki - HOWTO Install on Software RAID
mainly for the "--assume-clean" command-line switch to mdadm.
With a Larch live CD I took a tarball backup of each partition.
Then with cfdisk partitioned the disks.
And copied their partition tables to their RAID-1 mirrors:
sfdisk -d /dev/sda | sfdisk /dev/sdb
Now, I cannot boot Arch on the RAID-1 setup.
After initramfs is finished, I get a kernel panic as the "/" partition cannot be mounted.
The mkinitcpio.conf that created my kernel is this:
MODULES="ahci pata_amd ata_generic sata_nv sata_sil"
HOOKS="base udev autodetect pata scsi sata usbinput keymap raid lvm2 filesystems"
My rc.conf is this:
MODULES=(raid1 powernow-k8 fuse forcedeth ac battery button fan thermal loop)
My fstab ("/" and "/boot" lines) is this:
/dev/md0 /boot ext3 noatime 0 1
/dev/md1 / ext3 noatime 0 1
And my menu.lst is this:
timeout 5
default 0
color light-blue/black light-cyan/blue
title Arch Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/md1 ro swncq=1 md=0,/dev/sda1,/dev/sdb1 md=1,/dev/sda2,/dev/sdb2
initrd /kernel26.img
I even tried another shot by passing all ten RAID-1 arrays (md0 to md9) as kernel parameters, but still, no effect.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
PS: I have created a correct mdadm.conf file with:
mdadm -D --scan >>/etc/mdadm.conf
Last edited by wantilles (2008-09-08 08:28:20)

My experience with raid suggests that mdadm setups work after boot-up as "software raid". The array is assembled and "ID'd" with mdadm --assemble command.
IMHO In order to utilize mdadm for boot-up, how does the user "assemble" before the elements needed for mdadm --assemble are accessible?
IMHO My understanding of booting with raid involves the use of dmraid, a "software" raid program which can be adapted to boot use. It involves changes to the boot sequence to prevent loss of dmraid params during the boot processes such as hardware detect AFAIK.

Moving Thunderbold DAS with software RAID 1 to different Mac

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