RAID 1 or RAID 6 Compatibility?

If I purchase the 1 TB Time Capsule and I also purchase an additional 1 TB External Hard Drive that I connect directly into the USB port or Eathernet port on the Time Capsule, then will I be able to setup RAID 1 Mirrored 1 TB data integrity/storage where a drive can fail without sustaining any data loss? If so, what if I eventually chained 3 1 TB USB External Hard Drives or connected 3 to the Eathernet ports on the Time Capsule, then would I be able to setup RAID 6 Data Integrity, where up to 2 of the hard drives can fail without sustaining any data loss with 2 TB of storage? I guess really what I'm asking is are all of the hard drives seen as unique partitions separate from the Time Capsule when you either chain them via USB or connect them to the Eathernet ports on the Time Capsule?

JFraser wrote:
Is RAID via Ethernet supported?
No, it isn' t
Actually with TC you can't use any RAID configuration

Similar Messages

Raid firmware compatibility with the OS

We would like to update the firmware on a four year old xserve raid that is attached to Xserve running OS X 10.2.6. The OS will be left at its current level and we will just update the raid. The current raid firmware level is 1.0.1/1.16f. Our concern is with the compatibility of OS X 10.2.6 and the new raid firmware 1.5.
We have left versions as they are, because the server hosts millions of critical files and is used in a production environment. The raid is presented to the server as a software stripped raid 50 using all 14 drives. Because a software raid 50 is not portable we have been reluctant to tamper with the server environment.
Does anyone know of any compatibility issues or is raid firmware level independent of the operating system of the server to which it is attached>

The firmware on the RAID is totally independent of anything going on with the computer. You can update it to 1.5/1.5.1 and all should be fine. It doesn't matter what OS version you're running.
Be aware that if you're using LUN masking, that 1.5.1 removes that functionality from the GUI (so I'd recommend 1.5 in that case).
Also note the RAID 50 is portable -- if you moved the FC card and the cables to another machine it should show up properly.
In any case -- have a current backup before you upgrade that firmware -- that's best practice in any case.

Apple Raid Card compatibility with Tiger 10.4.11 ?

I am considering raiding 4 internal HD in a Mac Pro and I am still using Tiger 10.4.11.
Is there some compatibility issues with Apple Raid Card ?
The card specs say it should run 10.5 to work properly.
Any hints ?
TIA

I find mixed results here...
http://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/drivedb/search.drivedb.lasso
By putting in MacPro & 10.4, then searching the results for the word raid, though I don't see 10.4.11 specifically, I did notice RAID getting broken at upgrade points, and less than spectacular results... heck, my 10.3.9 SATA I, 2 drive RAID 0 on a QS/2001/G4/DP/1.467 does almost as good as the MacPro results.

Is osx mountain lion compatible with mac pro (4,1) w/ raid card?

I noticed Apple isn't selling the Mac Pro's with raid cards anymore, so it makes me wonder of Mountain Lion is compatible with my Mac Pro which uses the apple mac pro raid card. Anyone know??

Thanks Kappy. I'm more interested in the RAID card compatibility. Anyone else know?

S20 - WD RE4 hdd compatibility and RAID 1

I recently acquired an S20 and am looking to make good use of it. I am planning on using it as my home comp. I am intersted in two things:
HDD compatibility - I am looking into the Western Digital RE series (non green) and wondering if these will work (2Tb each) since the RAID will require TLER (I've always used WD Black - this will be my first RAID setup)
RAID 1 - Is this something setup in BIOS, Lenovo ware, or Win 7 (Pro or Ult). If I do get an adapter what is a good "inexpensive" (read: uesd/older) reliable brand model to use for a Raid 1? (This could also be moved later to a RAID 10 setup on a different project...maybe...)
Okay...three...
RAID 10 - Only with an adapter right? My original intended use of this unit was a home "Server"/"NAS"/'false hope that my data wont disappear" which I planned to use RAID 10...until I did my homework on the unit (3 bays). Would this units PSU be capable of handling this? Even with a controller card am I still limited to <2.2Tb each or can I use up to 4-6Tb drives for this purpose only (only need 2Tb in the home comp scenario)?
I'm not a business, I'm sure this is waaaay out of Warranty, I'm not concerned with anything other than will it work....

welcome to the forum!
RAID 1 is dead simple and can easily be handled by the built-in intel ICH10R controller.   TLER shouldn't be an issue.   i have two 2TB WD RED drives in RAID 1 in my C20 (on ICH10R) and haven't had an error or sync issue in two years.
RAID 10 will be a problem for two reasons.   first, fitting four HDDs inside the S20 will be a mechanical challenge.   even if you could squeeze four inside the chassis, cooling will be a problem to this since RE4 drives are 7200RPM and run hotter than their lower RPM counterparts.   second, RAID 10 using four 2TB drives will create a 4TB array and won't be supported by the BIOS.   the largest size partition will be limited to ~2.2TB as you said.
i would stick with RAID 1 and either look into external NAS or consider another system upgrade if/when you run out of storage space.   the 30-series and P-series systems are UEFI and support >2.2TB partitions.
ThinkStation C20
ThinkPad X1C · X220 · X60T · s30 · 600

PPC G5 compatibility of Areca PCIE RAID controller arc-1280?

Subject: Mac compatibility of Areca ARC-1280 24 ports PCI Express to SATA II RAID adapter.
At Areca's Internet site ( www.areca.com.tw) consumers can read at pages concerning arc-1280 card that: « The SATA RAID controllers support broad operating systems including ... MAC ... ».
At Specifications page, under: Operating system, it is written: « Mac OS X (no_bootable) ».
Absolutely no other warning appear about MAC owners.
So, if you are just a basic computer consumer, you are now strongly tempted to believe that if you got a MAC with PCIExpress technology & OS X, you can safely buy arc 1280 PCIE.
This is because (nearly) everyone knows that in real pragmatic actual life OS X exclusively runs on Apple Mac machines. In the case of arc-1280, as it is a PCIExpress adapter, only two Apple Mac models are possible: the very recent MACPro (Intel cpu based) & late 2005 PPC G5 dualcore (IBM cpu based). As Areca mentions nowhere any warning between MACPro & G5 dualcore, only owners of either of those PCIE machines may logically have the opportunity to run OS X with an arc-1280 connected!
If you are a little bit more paranoïd, before to buy such an expensive adapter, you will check if there are other stuffs to confirm your deductions. You then will find Areca's online user's manual 3.2, where it is stated that a bios configuration utility, contained into card's firmware, is « OS independant » & can be accessed at startup by pressing TAB or F6. About « MAC X » driver installation, user is invited to follow a readme.txt (that in fact does not exist nowhere). It is the same for archttp proxy server installation, which is also asserted to support Mac OS.
Moreover, a Mac driver is freely downloadable online, called arcmsr-1.3.1.pkg. Now you are ready to trust!
Having arc-1280 plugged, you start your Mac (happy to hear that card beep after startup) then install driver (the same is present online & on Areca's companion CD). A text appear:
« This driver supports...arc 1280...PCIE... Please note that this is a pre-release version of the driver for testing purpose, and is *NOT * for general distribution. ». But installation completes succesfully and you pay no attention to this frightening sentence hidden into Areca's driver package.
What then arise when you have your computer restarted? Nothing: except the beep at startup, Areca's high end Raid controller simply do not appear anywhere into Mac OS X!
As I cannot afford paying more than 1200 euro for just a startup beep, I decided to require help from distributor & Areca's very enigmatic support. Lastly distributor decided to try with another arc-1280 which was as useless on my Mac than the first one. I again protested, Areca's support seeming to have totally resign for quite a lot of time now, distributor blaming me not to have been carefull enough ?!
Distributor ask me now to re-send back the card. They will try to get their money back from Areca, then maybe will I have my money back ? They asked me to write a letter with a description of the problem & why I want a full refund.
This is now done, hoping this will help to avoid further misinformation.

MacGurus PCIE which are supported.
I saw the Areca reviewed xbitlabs
AMUG http://www.amug.com does great reviews of Mac compatible drives, enclosures, and controllers.

Mac Pro compatibility with Xserve Raid

Are the two compatible? In other words, can I connect an Xserve Raid to my Mac Pro (asuming that I have a Fiber Chanel card)?
If above answer is yes, asume that the Mac Pro is connected to a WLAN at home via Ethernet or airport. This WLAN also hosts one more computer (PC). Will this PC have access to the Xserve raid data?
Finally (and asuming that cost is not a big issue-I know how much the Raid solution costs, even at minimum config), Do you think that the Xserve Raid solution (with the minimum configuration) is better/more reliable/faster/ than the Mac Pro internal solution? Take into consideration that I am a photographer (shooting digital and raw format ONLY) and I consume about 50-60Gb of disk space per month
Mac Pro 2.66 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

You might want to look at what some other photographers use, Port Multiplier controller and drive enclosures. Up to 5 drives per channel for a total of 20 drives.
XRAID would offer FC and more levels of RAID support, and concurrent access, especially with Xsan.
Take a look at the AMUG reviews:
Mac Pro 2GHz 2GB WD Raptor/ RE 320/160 Mac OS X (10.4.8) APC RS1500

XServe Raid A1009 & Xserve Dual Core Compatibility

We have a 2X2GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon and are looking at an Apple xServe Raid A1009..
the Xserve has 2 fibre channels available.
Apple 2 Port 2Gbps Fibre Channel Card:
Name: pci-bridge
Type: PCI-to-PCI Bridge
Driver Installed: Yes
Bus: PCI
Slot: Slot-1
Vendor ID: 0x8086
Device ID: 0x0340
Revision ID: 0x0009
Link Width: x4
Link Speed: 2.5 GT/s
1. are these units compatible?
thanx
TW

+im lead to believe that i can put any old ATA/IDE drived up to 750GB as long as i run the latest firmware is that correct?+
When 750 PATAs were plentiful peoples results were mixed. The simple version is if the RAID understands the SMART controller the drive would work. Mostly there were a few 750GB models "known good" so everyone went with those until they stopped making them. I have to disagree with the "any old" characterization. It's not as picky as the Xserves but certain models *do not* work. Search the old threads about people trying trying different drives with mixed results. As I said the Caviar 500GB are the only drives still being made that I know of to reported as "known working".
On the larger issue I would very much hesitate to mix and match any drives in a RAID set-up due to reliability issues between drives. Whatever drives you settle on I would get them all the same models new at the same time.
I like my Xserve RAID - the thing is a workhorse - but I'd look at the cost + the cost of 16 replacement drives and look at what you might get in a SATA housing since those drives are still current.
My $.02,
=Tod

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!

Windows XP 64 bit pro clean install with RAID

Can anyone help out???
I recently purchased a Lenovo Thinkpad W700 with the raid system (raid1) it had Vista Business pre installed but I wasn't impressed so I've cleared VB out and tried to install XP 64 pro I have followed the guide I found on this site http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=188992
which was very informative but didnt seem to include any details on a raid installation. If I change my BIOS Serial ata (sata) to compatibility I can install win xp and get it running but no raid!! if I try to install the Intel chipset driver it reports it cannot install!! If I set the Bios Serial ATA to RAID the setup goes so far through then I get the BSOD
I seems to me I need some raid drivers but have no way of installing them during setup (I dont have the drivers anyway!!)
Sooooo...........can anyone out there point me in the right direction for a clean xp pro install with raid?? theres a couple of beers in it!!
Lenovo thinkpad W700, Q9000 2.00GHz Quad Core 2x 160gb hdd raid1, 4gb ram, 1gb nvidia graphics FX3700m Fingerprint reader, Graphics tablet (digitiser?)
Windows 7 Professional 64bit RAID 1

I believe you need to install the Intel Matrix Storage Manager Driver for Windows XP, Vista (32bit) - ThinkPad. Installation instructions are on the same site. If you don't have a floppy you can streamline them onto an install disk.
Other drivers can be found here.
Andy ______________________________________
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Raid cards for mac pro 2.66

i would like to set up a hardware card for my os as raid 0
(2 10,000 rpm hard drives)
and a hardware raid 1 for my data.(same/separate card ??)
are there any sudgestions on makes and models and compatability?
i am aware of the software raids provided by the os, i've heard they are not as reliable and fast as the harware solution, agree, disagree???

Yeah they say the software raid is good and I can't say first hand but I have heard good reports. In general I prefer hardware RAID but i setup server not clients so. Was using acard.com stuff for a bit but there offerings have gone down on the mac side. My current card of choice is Highpoint's Rocket RAID.
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/
Card works good and drivers all appear to be up-to-date with Intel based Mac's now. Nice web-GUI to the Raid controller. My only complaint could be OS related as opposed to driver but the Hot-Swap won't work right. In order for me to swap i need to drop the drives from the server and pull them. (alarms alarms, lol) Then put my swaps in. Seems the release call from the web-GUI does not kick the drive out right or the Mac OS won't let go of them even after un-mounting.

Lenovo D20, Type 4155-21G With 5x1.5tb Raid 5, Windows 7 64bit install problem.

H
Id like to just document a current machine and works and see if any thing is glaringly wrong..
Above spec machine has an onboard marrvel 66xx raid card, a raid 5 volume has been created, total useable space is around 5.5TB.
The software in play here is the following..
Orignal Lenovo recovery disk set, this is Rescue and recovery boot disk 1, then the OS which is Vista 32 Business, the disk label is actual 64bit but its not 64bit its 32bit.
The machine finally has to leave with Windows 7 64bit ultimate.
I have looked into the upgrade paths and so on and basicly you need vista 64bit ultimate in theory, certain hacks are possible such as renaming the os level or name via the registery, but this is dirverting from my post.
Here is what has been done and what has happend.
20th Jan.
Start of day.
Raid 5 volume created.
Factory recovery completed windows vista business 32bit.
Attempt to upgrade Windows vista business to Windows 7 ultimate from with in windows, windows 7 alerts this is not a compatable system etc.
At this stage since the 64bit upgrade is not possible from the known good lenovo state (lenovo vista business factory desktop etc) the second disks in the "Windows 7 32bit + 64bit any time upgrade package was ran.
The 32bit version of the Windows 7 ultimate was ran, this did complete sucessfully.
The 64bit version of the windows 7 was attempted once more from with in the newly installed Windows 7 32 bit but again this upgrade route is not supported.
At this stage a custom install was completed (which means a fresh install which wipes the drive) / fresh install, of the windows 7 64bit any time upgrade disk.
For some reason the Windows 7 64bit any time upgrade key failed to be accepted.
At this stage a second engineer repeated all steps completed to verify and on the second go around the FRESH install of Windows 64bit any time upgrade (stand alone install / custom etc) the key worked!..
This is were it gets interesting.
Lets recap, we have a D20 with 5x1.5tb sata hard drives in raid 5, all on the onboard marvel raid card.
Windows 7 64bit has been sucessfully installed, and of course the next step is to install the lenovo system update tool. (version for windows 7, I understand this is fully 64bit compatable..)
This was completed and pc doctor and one other misc application install, the system requested to restart and then ....
The raid BIOS of the marvel card reported that the raid had become degraded..!!
An inspection of the onboard raid information results that the disk 0 of the 5 disks, was no longer assigned to the RAID 5, with teh remaining several disks still "assigned".
At this stage the only option is to delete the raid five array and recreate it.
This has been done and the factory recovery process has once again been restarted and an attempt will be made to perform the custom install with hopefully the windows 7 64bit any time upgrade install detecting the previous version although I would say that it would not need to detect anything since this is now longer an upgrade but a custom fresh install.
Further information.
There is a System bios update from the 5th of Jan 2010, this has been burnt to cd and will be applyed against the machine shortly.
We have had some conversation about just how it is that a disk can fatally pop out from the raid five volume like this, was it a coincidence that it coninsided with the power cycle process dirrectly after the system update installation?
Tommorow a Windows 64bit OEM package will be applied against this machine and since we have the relivant driver file for the onboard raid card (sourced from the drivers and applications lenovo recovery disk set), there should be less of a problem in key acceptance.
Kind of a werid situation, what looks like a possible hardware problem and a stupid microsoft upgrade qulification problem.
Is there any thing stupid I have over looked?
Thanks, sorry for the long post but this is the story in full.
Note from Moderator: Fixed formatting issue.

21st Jan..
The D20 has sucessfully had vista business factory reinstalled and then Windows 7 64bit installed.
Dirrectly after the Windows 7 installation and power cycle, one of the five 1.5tb hard drives have dropped out of the raid, visable as "DEGRADED", uppon further inspection via control m, the middle drive (not drive 0 as before) drive 2 (0,1,2,3,4,5) has dropped out and is not marked as assigned, it is marked with no label or free.
This is high strangeness, it is my understanding that the RAID technologies are transparent to the OS so it should not be in any way the Windows 7 install triggering this, the last occurance was also during a Windows 7 power cycle but dirrectly after the system update tool being installed.
At this stage it would appear that Windows 7 64-bit used in conjunction with the supplment driver disk marked as (drivers and apps, windows xp vista, windows 7) is not able to complete and remain stable.
I suspect a possible driver issue but if this was the case surely the windows 7 install would not progress past the first installation point where the driver disks is required to actually use and see the array via the controler.
I will update this thread with more information as it becomes available.
Machine delivery eta to customer is tommorow so this is not good.

Windows Server 2012 Storage Spaces Simple RAID 0 VERY SLOW reads, but fast writes with LSI 9207-8e SAS JBOD HBA Controller

Has anyone else seen Windows Server 2012 Storage Spaces with a Simple RAID 0 (also happens with Mirrored RAID 1 and Parity RAID 5) virtual disk exhibiting extremely slow read speed of 5Mb/sec, yet write performance is normal at 650Mb/sec in RAID 0?
Windows Server 2012 Standard
Intel i7 CPU and Motherboard
LSI 9207-8e 6Gb SAS JBOD Controller with latest firmware/BIOS and Windows driver.
(4) Hitachi 4TB 6Gb SATA Enterprise Hard Disk Drives HUS724040ALE640
(4) Hitachi 4TB 6Gb SATA Desktop Hard Disk Drives HDS724040ALE640
Hitachi drives are directly connected to LSI 9207-8e using a 2-meter SAS SFF-8088 to eSATA cable to six-inch eSATA/SATA adapter.
The Enterprise drives are on LSI's compatibility list. The Desktop drives are not, but regardless, both drive models are affected by the problem.
Interestingly, this entire configuration but with two SIIG eSATA 2-Port adapters instead of the LSI 9207-8e, works perfectly with both reads and writes at 670Mb/sec.
I thought SAS was going to be a sure bet for expanding beyond the capacity of port limited eSATA adapters, but after a week of frustration and spending over $5,000.00 on drives, controllers and cabling, it's time to ask for help!
Any similar experiences or solutions?

Has anyone else seen Windows Server 2012 Storage Spaces with a Simple RAID 0 (also happens with Mirrored RAID 1 and Parity RAID 5) virtual disk exhibiting extremely slow read speed of 5Mb/sec, yet write performance is normal at 650Mb/sec in RAID 0?
Windows Server 2012 Standard
Intel i7 CPU and Motherboard
LSI 9207-8e 6Gb SAS JBOD Controller with latest firmware/BIOS and Windows driver.
(4) Hitachi 4TB 6Gb SATA Enterprise Hard Disk Drives HUS724040ALE640
(4) Hitachi 4TB 6Gb SATA Desktop Hard Disk Drives HDS724040ALE640
Hitachi drives are directly connected to LSI 9207-8e using a 2-meter SAS SFF-8088 to eSATA cable to six-inch eSATA/SATA adapter.
The Enterprise drives are on LSI's compatibility list. The Desktop drives are not, but regardless, both drive models are affected by the problem.
Interestingly, this entire configuration but with two SIIG eSATA 2-Port adapters instead of the LSI 9207-8e, works perfectly with both reads and writes at 670Mb/sec.
I thought SAS was going to be a sure bet for expanding beyond the capacity of port limited eSATA adapters, but after a week of frustration and spending over $5,000.00 on drives, controllers and cabling, it's time to ask for help!
Any similar experiences or solutions?
1) Yes, being slow either on reads or on writes is a quite common situation for storage spaces. See references (with some of the solutions I hope):
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverfiles/thread/a58f8fce-de45-4032-a3ef-f825ee39b96e/
http://blogs.technet.com/b/askpfeplat/archive/2012/10/10/windows-server-2012-storage-spaces-is-it-for-you-could-be.aspx
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserver8gen/thread/64aff15f-2e34-40c6-a873-2e0da5a355d2/
and this one is my favorite putting a lot of light on the issue:
http://helgeklein.com/blog/2012/03/windows-8-storage-spaces-bugs-and-design-flaws/
2) Issues with SATA-to-SAS hardware is also very common. See:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/winserverClustering/thread/5d4f68b7-5fc4-4a3c-8232-a2a68bf3e6d2
StarWind iSCSI SAN & NAS

I have some queries usage of RAID 1 on OSX

Hi there
I apologise for the length of this question, but there's quite a bit of relevant data. I work in a small typesetting company (<10 employees) and since a HDD failed on an old G4 iMac that we used as a data archive we have learnt that without our data we are nothing. I have now been asked to implement a more reliable back up/recovery system (with minimum downtime) that increases the 'safety' of our customer's data. Rebuilding the archive took days to sort out and because the archive was constantly accessed by our production macs and a couple of PC as well, it hit us hard.
We are looking into turning an old G5 Powermac (1.8Gz single processor 2.5Gb RAM) into a RAID 1 (mirrored) system with 2 x 1TB SATA drives using Disk Utility. We would have this to protect against one HD failing and losing customers' data. I understand that this is not a back up system, just something that would protect customer's data should a drive critically fail. I have some queries regarding how this works though.
1) How much (if any) maintenance is required on a RAID system? None of use are IT specialists - just typesetters with a bit of technical knowledge.
2) Is a mirrored RAID system reliable, considering multiple people are reading/writing to the machine throughout the day?
3) Do RAID 1 systems handle being accessed by different OSs (WinXP, Win7, OSX 10.4–10.6) well?
4) Am I right in thinking that OSX would see the two drives as separate volumes?
5) Should one drive fail and need to be 'rebuilt' via Disk Utility, can users still access the one working HD, or do you need to replace the failed HD and rebuild before anyone can access the data again?
6) Considering Question 4 above, do we need to have a 3rd 'spare' 1TB Drive just in case?
7) We are looking into a two-week backup system, backing up all the customers data on a daily basis, with the previous week's disk being stored off-site. We were initially looking into either Carbon Copy Cloner or RSync the copy data to external HDDs. How would you rate Time Machine against these products, and does anyone have any experience using these solutions with RAIDed Macs?
8) Is there any 'downside' to RAID 1 systems?
I know this is a lot of questions, but I really don't want to start down this route unless I understand it better first.
Many thanks in advance for your contributions!

Mac_fool wrote:
Thanks for your reply!
So, in order to have a RAID visible and accessible by multiple OSs, and to eliminate downtime during rebuilds, a hardware RAID would be necessary.
Well, not quite. When you create a RAID in Disk Utility, the volume only exists as a MacOS X file system. Your Mac can share that volume to any other machines or operating systems.
What I mean by a hardware RAID is some box whose output port is eSATA or USB or some other non-network storage port. On such a device, the logic to create the file system is inside the box. Any machine that is connected to it would see only a single disk. You would still have to ensure that different operating systems could understand whatever file system you were using (HFS+, FAT, NTFS, etc), but that is the same as if you had a non-RAID external drive.
I have one of those. It is an older FireWire 800 drive that has two 300 GB disks inside. To any machine I connect that to, it appears as a single 600 GB drive. This particular device isn't designed for mirroring, however. If it were, it would only show itself as a 300 GB hard drive and I would have the capability to easily swap out the internal mechanisms when they fail.
By 'hardware RAID', do you mean inserting a RAID controller card inside the G5, or a separate storage device, such as a RAIDed NAS-type-thing? Would an ethernet-connected NAS be slower to access than a G5 with internal SATA? Am I right in thinking that those RAID-ready NAS devices cannot be partitioned at all?
I qualified the above to explicity avoid NAS devices just to simplify things.
I'm not familiar with RAID controller cards. My guess is that they are just a cheaper alternative to an external RAID device. It would allow you to plug your own hard drives into the controller card and create the RAID. They would certainly provide higher performance that if the operating system were handling the details.
If you want to have a RAID for data reliablity, you really need an external, self-contained device that has a standard hardware storage port you could plug into any machine. It would look and act just like any other external hard drive. But if a drive failed, a light would flash on the box and you could just pull out the failed hard drive and replace it with a new one. You wouldn't even need to power anything down.
For both RAID controller cards and stand-alone boxes, you may or may not need additional software to partition and format the drive. It depends on the model and manufacturer.
Such a device could also be NAS. In this case, it would have an ethernet interface instead (or in addition). The difference is that such an interface would almost always be slower than a true storage interface like Firewire or USB. Plus, you would usually have to let the box itself handle its partitioning and formatting. Since it is designed to be a networked drive, you don't need another machine to be the server. It is its own server. This is useful in those cases where you don't want/need a dedicated server. The downside is that it probably runs some lowest-common denominator Windows networking for maximum compatibility. Foreign, networked filesystems are always going to be more flaky. Some software may not work. Some OS upgrade may give you hassles.
To be honest, I'm no expert on RAIDs. In such situations, I usually just defer to people I know are experts. So, just buy the amount one of these: (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Desktop/), plug it in, and go. I suggest RAID 5.

Raid 0 Failure! XP Pro won't read array on MSI k7T266 pro2 *URGE

Before anything else, thanks for reading and I hope you can help:
I have an MSI k7T266 Pro2A-RU motherboard with 512MB of Mushkin RAM, AMD XP 1600+, a Geforce2 MX400, Audigy Soundcard and a cheap PCI NIC card. I consider myself an above average technician and I've come up on a problem I can't figure out. There is about 80GB of data at stake here:
I have 2 IBM Deskstar 40GB 7200 RPM drives that were configured in a RAID 0 (stripe) configuration over a year and a half ago. This gave me a total of 80GB online. Windows XP Professional was installed and the drives have been running fine every since...
The system was practically bulletproof and it was very rare it ever locked up for any reason. A few days ago, however, the system locked up about 4 or five times. There was no software or hardware that had been added or installed and system use hadn't really changed up or down. I run up to date antivirus software (Command Anti-Virus), run behind a secure firewall and watch what I open. The lock ups were random, but happened when I was away from the computer. ( I leave my system on all the time).
Being a bit paranoid, on 1/28/03, I acquired an 80GB Maxtor drive to install to back up my datafiles. Before the install, I notice the system had locked up at least once that day, so I figured I would hurry up and get the drive in to back up. I installed the 80, booted, configured it in XP and made it active and transfered a few test files over. No problem. I made the decision to back up my data files before bed and continued to work for the next two hours. The system ended up locking up with a windows blue screen STOP error message: KERNEL_FAULT_INPAGE_ERROR when I tried to run a program. Thinking little of it, I rebooted the computer to find I could no longer access the data on the RAID.
I've tried nearly EVERYTHING I can think of. (You can already assume I've done the basics (check/replace the cables, etc). Here's a list and the results:
---- Reboot in all available modes (Safe, Safe with NW, Normal, Last known, etc). They all FAIL. In safe modes, you can see where the system actually tries to boot off the array (runs through driver files and stops on MUP.SYS) and hangs. Same result with all other drives removed except the RAID.
---- Installed another drive, loaded XP with the raid controller files (By the way, it's a Promise ATA 100 "lite" controller), plugged the RAID back in and it hangs on boot up. Safe mode gives the same results. Tried the same thing with Windows 2000 (so I could access the NTFS partition) and Windows 2000 won't load when the array is plugged in, but loads ok when it isn't (used the 2000 driver for the RAID controller for this attempt). Safe mode gives the same results.
---- Removed all drives except the Array and tried to reload XP (with the array drivers downloaded again from the site.) No effect. System hangs.
---- In a last ditch effort, I have access to Winternals Administration Pack 2002 of all of their tools. ERC Commander, designed for this type of problem, Disk Commander, and the other tools all do the same thing: Any time the system attempts to read from or access the arry, the OS will hang. It won't even check for NTFS compatibility in the ERC commander program booting from a boot CD, and for those that are familiar with it, the Disk Commander program blue screens with a STOP: 0x000007B (0xF896963C, 0xC0000034, 0x0, 0x0) error. Research has told me this is an INACCESSABLE BOOT DEVICE message.
These are the main highlight major attempt things and there's a few things in between I've tried (like using Norton Ghost to try and mirror the array to the 80GB. Norton ghost said there is an error reading the partition and can't go any further (Returns an Internal error))
I'm at the point where I have run out of available options and don't know what else to try. I have since purchased the exact same motherboard off e-bay to see if it just so happens to be the controller and to see if my RAID will come back so I can at least read the data off of it. It should be here in a few days. If that doesn't work, I'm toasted. Could I be fighting a hardware (drive or board or controller) problem. Is the array THAT corrupt the OS can't read it???
If anyone has any other bright ideas, I'm willing to try about anything short of damaging the array. Any help is greatly appreciated. Please post here, or e-mail to [email protected].
BTW, the Promise BIOS is Fasttrak 100 "Lite" v 1.31.1(Build 30)
Thanks.
- Chuck! ?( ;( ;( ;( ;( ?(

got one but its lightley used for storage but amd forum storage is full of tales of woe with them
type deskstar and problems in goggle for a laugh

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