RAID card or Disk Utility RAID - Need simple comparison please.

Folks, I am trying to make sense of the necessity or lack thereof for Apple's RAID card. Can someone provide a simple breakdown or comparison of the RAID card and/or loading the Mac Pro with drives and striping them using Disk Utility. I was under the impression that I could buy a Mac Pro, fill up the drive slots and just have Disk Utility set up the RAID. I'll be working with HD.
Enlighten me please

Can someone provide a simple breakdown or comparison of the RAID card and/or loading the Mac Pro with drives and striping them using Disk Utility.
Users that are working with uncompressed HD 1920x1080 10bit RGB video usually aim for storage speeds of 240MB/sec or more. Obtaining this level of performance across the RAID is the trick.
The Apple RAID 5 card can provide 306MB/sec. when configured as a striped RAID set, using four Seagate 250GB model 7200.10 internal hard drives with 16MB cache, when the volume is empty. By the time the striped RAID set reaches 80% full performance drops to 214MB/sec. A setup that can provide 240MB/sec. when the volume is 100% full will provide a more reliable configuration for 1080 uncompressed HD video processing.
Disk Utility can provide this same level of performance without the RAID 5 card.
So what is the advantage of the Apple RAID 5 card?
The redundancy of RAID 5 can add a layer of protection against the failure of a single hard drive. RAID 5 can be rebuilt whereas RAID 0 provides zero data protection. The problem with RAID 5 in a four drive setup is that one disk is required for storing parity data. This leaves the RAID 5 slower as only 3 disks can be used for performance. In a RAID 5 four drive setup the top speed available will usually be approximately 210MB/sec. and when full closer to 180MB/sec. As you can see RAID 5 adds some data protection but the price is lower performance. That is the feature that the Apple RAID 5 card offers combined with a bootable internal solution.
Do I need 240MB/sec. performance?
Users that are not working with uncompressed HD 1920x1080 10bit video may find slower RAID performance will work for them. HDV requires approx. 25MB/sec and DVCPRO HD needs 100MB/sec.
On the other hand, when I am working with large video files the faster the RAID, the easier it is to work with large files. So while I may not have dropped frames with slower DV formats I still
prefer to work with as fast of a RAID configuration as I can justify.
Other Options?
The Mac Pro has many superior performance options available for creating fast RAID volumes. My current favorite setup is the eight channel Areca ARC-1221x RAID 6 controller paired with an external Enhance E8-ML enclosure. You can see an AMUG review of it here:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/areca/1221x/
This setup provides a RAID 6 array with twice the redundancy of RAID 5. It also supports up to eight hard drives which significantly enhances performance. Using eight Seagate 320GB model 7200.10 hard drives in a RAID 6 configuration with the ARC-1221x provides over 430MB/sec. when empty and over 220MB/sec when 100% full. Up to two drives can fail and the RAID can still be rebuilt. The ARC-1221x is available to AMUG members for $680 until the end of the month here:
http://www.tekramonline.com/amugpromos.html
The Enhance E8-ML 8 bay enclosure is $595. Details are here:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/enhance/e8/
You will also need two external Mini-SAS to Infiniband cable model Ext-MS-1MSB. I got mine here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000FUOMO0/arizomacinusergr
So for $1340 you get an 8 bay RAID 6 setup that provides awesome performance, supports RAID levels 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 10 or JBOD and can even be setup to boot the Mac Pro with any of these RAID configurations. I think this is a great setup.
More Options
If the user already has SATA PM enclosures and wants to add external RAID 5 capability for minimal cost, HighPoint has introduced the new RocketRAID 2314.
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/2314/
The HighPoint RocketRAID 2314 only costs $200 but it adds nice RAID 5 performance with SATA PM enclosures when using the new Mac version 2.11 driver. Using two SATA PM enclosures with 5 hard drives mounted in each enclosure for a total of 10 drives can provide RAID 5 performance of over 370MB/sec when empty and over 318MB/sec when 100% full. It doesn't offer RAID 6 or boot capability but this is very nice RAID 5 setup.
The card costs $180 on sale here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000NAXGIU/arizomacinusergr
Two quiet Sonnet 500P five bay enclosures will run $1000
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/sonnet/500p/
So for $1180 users have a high performance RAID 5 setup that supports up to ten SATA hard drives. The RAID 5 performance is twice as powerful as an internal four bay solution. Plus, this setup allows users to still utilize the Mac Pro internal bays for importing more data or for backup.
The Apple RAID 5 solution is a nice one. It just seems a little pricey compared to other faster solutions that are available. However, if Apple ever came out with a new RAID 6 card that used the internal 4 ports plus offered two external mini-SAS ports for a total of 12 drives, that would be a product totally worthy of a $1000 premium.
Happy hunting!

Similar Messages

Can a RAID created by Disk Utility be connected to another Mac?

Hi There,
We're looking to upgrade our workstation storage (4x workstations) and have recently had issues with third-party RAID cards and third-party RAID enclosures.
If we were to purchase a JBOD enclosure and use Disk Utility to create the RAID, would the RAID be recognised on different Macs if the enclosures were moved around? I realise performance would suffer compared with dedicated hardware RAID.
The main reason for using disk utility is that the smaller 4-5 disk enclosures don't seem to have RAID 10 and we've noticed a rebuild issue with 2 of our RAID 5 enclosures. After reseraching online, it turns out to be an issue inherent with RAID 5/6 (bad sectors causing issues on rebuild).
So we're thinking of buying enclosures with JBOD, then using Disk Utility to create RAID 10.
Hope that makes sense, any help or suggestions would be much appreciated.
Cheers
Ben

Grabbed a JBOD enclosure today and discovered that RAIDs made on one Mac are recognised on other Macs.

Disk Utility Raid 1

I have an iMac running OS X version 10.8.5 , Processor 2.7 GHz Intel Core i5, Memory 4GB 1333 MHz DDR3 .
I use Time Machine to back up on a WD MyBookStudio. I recently had a disk error:
I ran disk utility:
2013-10-21 19:34:34 -0500: Checking volume information.
2013-10-21 19:34:34 -0500: The volume Time Machine was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.
2013-10-21 19:34:35 -0500: Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.2013-10-21 19:34:35 -0500:
2013-10-21 19:34:35 -0500: Disk Utility stopped verifying “Time Machine”: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
2013-10-21 19:34:35 -0500:
I ran the repair tool and repaired the volume:
2013-10-23 09:55:34 -0500: The volume Time Machine was repaired successfully.
2013-10-23 09:55:34 -0500: Volume repair complete.2013-10-23 09:55:34 -0500: Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.2013-10-23 09:55:35 -0500: Repair tool completed:
2013-10-23 09:55:35 -0500:
2013-10-23 09:55:35 -0500:
Should I be concerned about this error and get another backup disk?
Should I get and additional WD MyBookStudio and run Disk Utility Raid 1 to have 2 duplicate drives?
How well does Disk Utility Raid 1 work?
Where can I find more information about running Disk Utility Raid 1?
Thanks for your help !!!

bump

RAID Admin and Disk Utility show different sizes

Hello all,
I have tried searching through these forums for a resolution to this, but did not really find one. Here is my situation:
I have an XServe Dual G4 in a branch office. It has attached to it an XServe RAID. Last week, when I was down working in the office I added a new drive to the RAID. The lower channel on the RAID had 4 172GB drives in it, and I added a 5th and and told RAID admin to resize the RAID.
The next day, the RAID was finished resizing. RAID admin was reporting that the array was now 690GB. However, after rebooting the server and RAID multiple times, Disk Utility in OS X is still showing that the Volume on the RAID is only 517GB.
So, I have a couple of questions:
1. How is it possible that by adding a 172GB drive to a RAID 5 array that was about 520GB I ended up with an array that is 690 GB? That would imply that there is no parity (since 690 - 520 = 170 and the drive I added in was 172GB).
2. How do I get the server to see the additional space? The server is at the newest version of the OS and the RAID it as the newest version of the firmware.
Please help.
Mac OS X (10.4.8)

I've run into the same issue with a newer PPC XServe. However, after I tried to reformat, I still only show up with the orginal size, and not the new size, even after I restarted the server and XRAID.
Did you have any success with your reformat?

How do you setup RAID 10 with Disk Utility?

I read a post that indicated a Mac Pro user created two mirrors and then striped them with Disk Utility to create a RAID 10.
I tried this but Disk Utiity will not allow me to stripe the two mirrors. I tried dragging and using the "+" button. In each case no RAID 10 could be created.
Could someone list the exact procedure for creating a RAID 10 using Disk Utility?
Thank you

I have Mac OS X Build 8K1124 and I believe that came with my Mac Pro as I've not required a Mac OS X update via Software Update.
Now, I have to honest, I'm not entirely sure that was the exact process. As you can appreciate I don't have another 4 drives to try this again so I'll do my best here.
It's definitely right up until the part of making the mirrors and unmounting them, that I know for sure. What I don't remeber is what I had selected to get to the RAID tab to create the Stripe Set. I believe I had one of the mirror partitions selected, that is, either "disk5" or "disk6", which brought up the RAID tab that then allowed me to create the stripe set.
I then created the set and then dragged the mirrors (I believe disk5 and disk6) into the set.
If you can't do this can you let me know how your situation deviates?

Can not format my SanDisk Extreme Pro SDXC card using Disk Utility

Hello!
So, I have a problem with my SD cards.
I have an 27" iMac where I can read, write or format my SDXC SanDisk Extreme Pro cards for fun.
As soon as I insert them into my MB Pro, I lose that capability. I can only read them.
The option for format the cards gets greyed out.
I must get them working on my MB Pro since I am leaving in a week with my camera and laptop and absolutely have to be able to format the cards in the laptop, since I own a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera where that is not an option in the camera.
I have OSX 10.9.5 on both computers.
There does not seem to be a problem with other external drives that I own. My Western Digital Passport can be formatted, read and written on my MB Pro.
What do you guys think?
Regards,
Atli

I have found a little workaround for this stupid thing.
If you remove your SD card and then log out of your account. Then in again, insert the card, open disk utility and then everything should be okay!
Worked for me on both SD cards, but I have to do this every time I want to format a SD card.

Do I need a RAID card to make a RAID configuration?

Now, I'm well aware that the subject heading above could be a very dumb question, so I will clarify it.
I have ordered my first Mac Pro. In trying to squeeze as much in the way of processing power, memory and hard disk space in with my limited budget, I opted not to go for the RAID card, at well over 500 quid.
As someone who is far from being a computer wizard, my question is, does the lack of said item mean I will not be able to set up a RAID configuration? (This pre-supposes of course, that I would be capable of doing it with one.) Or does it just make things easier? Assuming I need something do do this, is there a cheaper route?

It means that if you create a RAID set with two drives and want to add a third later, you will first have to copy elswhere the data on the two drives in question, destroy the RAID set, start over creating a three drive RAID set, then recopy the data if so wish.
it literally does not take a minute to set one up. You most certainly can do it. In disk utility, you click on the RAID button, select the two or three drives you want to use, they unmount, click create and a few seconds later, mounts a new volume.

HT2559 Data scrubbing / patrol read with RAID built by Disk Utility

I have used Disk Utility to make a RAID 1 array from two commercial hard drives. The RAID is to hold my music and movie files. While the data redundancy was one reason to make the RAID, I also hoped that the Mac would perform "data scrubbing" of the RAID to keep the files from degrading over time. Does the OS X RAID controller perform this data scrubbing, and does it do so automatically, or is there an app for that? Thanks!

Always have two backups or sets of data. If you are going to erase one set... then for a stretch of time you only have the one good copy I take it? I guess the originals would be one good set, so you are safe.
You realize you can unmount drives connected on Sonnet controllers, right? No need to shutdown your computer, just the enclosure(s). Couldn't tell if that is what you said anyway.
I don't use internal drives for backups, just external SATA and at least one on FireWire. One backup is always off line at any time. And enough juice on the UPS to carry me through what I am doing or can safely get past.
I just read one of AMUG/michael's post on a controller that supports hardware RAID and ability to map out bad sectors "on the fly" which is about the only time I worry about a failure. That, and UPS, and beware of OS patches and updates (one security update affected SeriTek on some G4/5s).
I'd say you've done a lot for being new to RAID - and using the same make/model/revision for all your drives helps a lot. Buying together, and having at least one 'spare' if one fails, is also good insurance.
Some poeple use 4 drives in a 5-drive enclosure. For heat and ventilation and because sometimes it might be ideal for performance. Never used or seen the 500P up close but I suspect it is well built.
You could build a 2nd 500P and either increase performance or capacity or use 2nd as backup. If you don't need to copy 1GB per minute, then a concatenated RAID fills drive A before putting data on B and is more secure than a stripped RAID but still shows up as one large volume.

Can I create a raid drive with disk utility

I recently bought a 2TB seat gate external drive.
I want to use this drive with time machieve as well as set it up as a raid drive to strode photos.
Is this possible to do with disk utility?

Hello
you can not make any kind on RAID type with only one hard drive you need at least tow drive to perform a RAID volume
then , hard drive utility can be use to perform software raid ( Level 0 an Level 1 only )
for more info about RAID technologie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
Pierre

See a Disk Utility RAID on another Start Up?

Hey
we made a mirrored RAID with two FireWire externals. How can we see the RAID set while booted from another Start Up Volume - without the Holy Hard Drive Trinity "Initialize, Ignore, Eject" coming up?
Is there a pref file that need so to be copied over? BTW the set was created while running Server 10.4 - the other start up is 10.3+ - in case that makes a difference... (it's one partition tho.) Or do we say "ignore" that repair with Disk Utility?
Tim
MacBook (BootCamp), various Macs and servers Mac OS X (10.4.7)

RAID of any time created with Tiger are not backward compatible with Panther.
For that you would need SoftRAID or to create the RAID under Panther. Quite a few changes and improvements went into Tiger (and again w/ 10.4.4 I believe).
And, to really do FW800 RAID you want each drive on independent bus/channels as well (I had to invest in two PCI controllers).

Disk Utility Raid question

Is it software based RAID? or does the disk utility control a hardware based RAID?

For every disk drive I keep two backups. Rather than relying on mirror, which copies problems, and protects only from a hard failure, a FW800 and eSATA might be the way to go.
SoftRAID ($149 3rd party) will alert you on any I/O error and supports "stripe reads" from mirror if you go that route.
Zero your drive, backups, good maintenance. You can also backup to disk images.
Always always have an emergency boot drive AND a copy of the OS before you make any updates.
It is possible to partition a drive and then stripe or mirror using part of the drives to other identical drives. Performance of your "0+1" is poor.
If you are like most, over the years I've tried various setups and configurations, and continue to, in part to test and tweak, or to learn along the way. But backup sets are deeply ingrained from over 30 years of handling files, systems and data. And in the rare event of a drive failure, most of the time a simple reformat (or 7-way write erase nowadays) works. And there are programs to test and map out bad sectors. Heat more than anything shortens a drive's life, assuming the drive's mechanics are good (most are).
You have your drives, so can't sell you on which drives are enterprise, optimized or best for RAID (some are not suitable, and some have problems).

Disk Utility RAID Issue

I'm trying to determine if the problems that I'm encountering are a software issue or a hardware issue.
I'm setting up a Mac Pro with Leopard and have four Maxtor 6G160E0 160GB hard drives that I'm trying to set up as two Mirrored drive sets. Everything seemed to go fine, created the two mirror sets, installed Leopard, configured and tested two user accounts and Office 2004, then updated everything to the latest version. When done I shut it down planning on moving it to it's final home tonight.
But, when I turned it on both mirror sets were degraded - all four drives were still recognized as RAID slices but came up as failed in the RAID tab. I saw no errors reported in the log so I assumed that those two drives were faulty. I shut down, moved the good drives to bays 1 & 2 and rebooted.
First reboot gave me a prohibition symbol instead of the usual Apple. Powered down and on and it booted fine but the second drive came up as a failed RAID slice. Rebooted again and both were fine.
I reinstalled the two "failed" drives and reformatted them - both reformatted fine and mounted without problems. I unmounted the new partition just in case, but, when I tried to rebuild the RAIDs I get the following in the error log:
11/1/07 7:26:00 PM Disk Utility[141] Preparing to erase : “Untitled”
11/1/07 7:26:00 PM Disk Utility[141] Partition Scheme: GUID Partition Table
11/1/07 7:26:00 PM Disk Utility[141] 1 volume will be created
11/1/07 7:26:00 PM Disk Utility[141] Name : “Untitled”
11/1/07 7:26:00 PM Disk Utility[141] Size : 149.1 GB
11/1/07 7:26:00 PM Disk Utility[141] Filesystem : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
11/1/07 7:26:00 PM Disk Utility[141] Creating partition map.
11/1/07 7:26:03 PM Disk Utility[141] Formatting disk1s2 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name Untitled.
11/1/07 7:26:06 PM Disk Utility[141] Erase complete.
11/1/07 7:26:12 PM Disk Utility[141] Unmount of “Untitled” succeeded
11/1/07 7:26:31 PM Disk Utility[141] Rebuilding RAID
11/1/07 7:26:31 PM Disk Utility[141] Filesystem: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
11/1/07 7:26:31 PM Disk Utility[141] RAID type: Mirrored RAID Set
11/1/07 7:26:31 PM Disk Utility[141] RAID set name: “Yorktown”
11/1/07 7:26:31 PM Disk Utility[141] RAID set status before rebuild: “”
11/1/07 7:26:31 PM Disk Utility[141] RAID chunk size: 32K (default)
11/1/07 7:26:31 PM Disk Utility[141] Mirror Auto Rebuild: Disabled (default)
11/1/07 7:26:31 PM Disk Utility[141] 2 members
11/1/07 7:26:31 PM Disk Utility[141] RAID Slice (disk0s2) - Online
11/1/07 7:26:31 PM Disk Utility[141] Maxtor 6G160E0 Media (disk1) - New
11/1/07 7:26:32 PM Disk Utility[141] Error rebuilding RAID: Unrecognized Filesystem.
11/1/07 7:26:33 PM Disk Utility[141] RAID failed: Unrecognized Filesystem.
I'm at a loss at the moment. I am leaning towards bad drives, but FOUR bad drives all at once is suspicious.
I've searched for similar issues and found none so I thought I'd check here and see if anyone had any ideas.

G'day Zeekm,
Thank you for that. I did this and it seems to work. The Disk Utility GUI does not seem to work.
Hope this helps some one,
#Checked the RAID status
root# diskutil checkRAID
RAID SETS
===============================================================================
Name: Server_HD
Unique ID: 7E31E20E-F53D-4D76-AD37-139C4E1440AB
Type: Mirror
Status: Degraded
Size: 1000070610944 B
Device Node: disk2
Apple RAID Version: 2
# Device Node UUID Status
0 disk1s3 BAC72F86-B05F-4B0F-97D3-58A6207E7DFA Failed
1 disk0s3 2BFB55BB-EFF9-438C-A1F9-A8ED7A93D385 Online
===============================================================================
#Told it to resync
root# diskutil repairMirror disk2 disk1s3
Note: Syncing data between mirror partitions can take a very long time.
Note: The mirror should now be repairing itself. You can check its status using 'diskutil listRAID'.
temp:~ root# diskutil listRAID
RAID SETS
===============================================================================
Name: Server_HD
Unique ID: 7E31E20E-F53D-4D76-AD37-139C4E1440AB
Type: Mirror
Status: Degraded
Size: 1000070610944 B
Device Node: disk2
Apple RAID Version: 2
# Device Node UUID Status
0 disk1s3 9D955C85-7EC0-4E92-848A-62D9F7C12EED 0% (Rebuilding)
1 disk0s3 2BFB55BB-EFF9-438C-A1F9-A8ED7A93D385 Online
===============================================================================
Hope this helps,
Cheers,
Arthur

RAID 5 and Disk utility problems - wrong volume size for formatting

Hi ..
I seem to have an odd problem with setting up our new RAID 5 solution. We just bought the SR6600 with seperately bought Western Digital 750Gb servergrade SATA disks.
Through the console I configured the RAID set to be RAID5 with a total capacity of 2750Gb and with a volumeset of 3000Gb (4 discs capacity and 1 disc parity).
Here's the problem:
When I'm trying to format the new volume for HFS+ usage, I open Disk Utility and it shows the volume, but the capacity is only 750Gb - similar to 1 disc's capacity. I find this odd and I've searched all over the net for a solution and answer.
Please advice if anyone know of any management software, explaination, etc.
Much appreciated, thanks!

I've run into the same issue with a newer PPC XServe. However, after I tried to reformat, I still only show up with the orginal size, and not the new size, even after I restarted the server and XRAID.
Did you have any success with your reformat?

"Could not find RAID" error in Disk Utility

Hello,
I could really use some help as this problem is causing me lots of headaches. I have two 500GB MyBook hard-drives connected to my MacBook Pro via two USB's. I had them setup as a mirrored RAID, and they were working properly for quite sometime. However over the past few weeks I noticed they were always in a degraded state, and Disk Utility would always rebuild them. However after the rebuild they would still have the status of "Degraded" and the next time Disk Utility opened it would start the rebuilding process yet again.
So I moved all the data on the drives to a backup, and I stopped the mirrored RAID. After erasing the data on the drives individually I attempted to setup the mirror again. However after the mirror had just about finished, and it was to the point of "bringing the RAID online" I always get an error that states "Creating RAID set failed", "Creating RAID set failed with the error: Could not find RAID.".
I'm hoping someone smarter than myself in this area can lend me some time and assistance to solving this issue.
Thanks,
Paul

Well. No one really came to my rescue with this question. Turned out to be a Finder issue. After reinstalling the operating system everything started working again with Disk Utility.
Later,
Paul

Disk Utility RAID of 2 volumes, one drive mistakenly erased. Recoverable?

Thanks for any help.
I have a Mac Pro.
It has 2x 750GB drive formatted in Disk Utility as a RAID volume (striped).
I erased one of the volumes by mistake.
I know I can recover the data from the erased drive, but it will be useless without the other drive. So how would I go about restoring the data in such a way that it is recognized as the other half of the RAID volume again?
Thanks for any help.

The commercial "SoftRAID" ($149) http://www.softraid.com
... is able to convert Apple RAID to its own format, AND has had excellent success for others in recovering in some situations.
They have excellent support so email them; a demo; and good PDF guides for download are worth a read.

RAID card or Disk Utility RAID - Need simple comparison please.

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