RAID's as Startup Disks

Actually several questions in that. I've cobbled together three basically useless old external firewire drives into on 500G unit that is actually useful. My goal is to move my massive iTunes library to that (I have a Time Capsule for backup, so the issues of data loss are prepared for). However, I WAS using one of those tiny drives to have a copy of the system software, and a couple of utilities (onyx and Disk Warrior) as quick way of getting the system up and running if I have a problem. I want to install snow leopard on the new raid drive, but the installer won't find it. Is this because you can't use a raid as a startup drive? Or is it that it's all old firewire drives? Or is the problem something else entirely?
Any thoughts would be appreciated.

You don't need hardware RAID. In fact hardware RAID is very limited when it comes to booting a Mac. The closest are probably a 4-drive or dual drive enclosure with built in RAID bridge, but that isn't hardware RAID.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Desktop/
Listed in the profile is PowerBook G4 listed along with 10.6.x by the poster, which are way off.
Without a controller though you are asking to share the FW bus single channel which doesn't make much sense or have bandwidth. Any of today's drives can saturate a FW800 connection.

Similar Messages

Can't boot in safe mode - RAID startup disk

hi ..
my macpro has a mirrored RAID as a startup disk (using HD bay 1 & 2) ... i am trying to boot into safe mode but this does not work at all, even when holding down the shift key it starts up in normal user mode.
Is there a way to do this ? is it maybe possible to boot into safe mode with a terminal command ? or any other way ?
thx for any help with this ...

Hallo
This topic is quite old, but I face exactly the same issue.
My MacPro tries to boot in safe mode, but restarts and boots in normal mode afterwards.
There are messages in system.log that indicate to me that the kernel exensions on the boot helper volumes are different from the ones on the main partition:
Dec 19 21:06:11 localhost kernel[0]: Got boot device = IOService:/AppleACPIPlatformExpert/PCI0@0/AppleACPIPCI/SATA@1F,2/
AppleAHCI/PRT2@2/IOAHCIDevice@0/AppleAHCIDiskDriver/IOAHCIBlockStorageDevice/IOB lockStorageDriver/ST3750640AS P Media/IO
GUIDPartitionScheme/AppleRAID_OfflineV2_Untitled3@2/AppleRAIDMember/AppleRAIDMirrorSet/RAID@0
Dec 19 21:06:11 localhost kernel[0]: BSD root: disk3, major 14, minor 11
Dec 19 21:06:11 localhost kernel[0]: [Bluetooth::CSRHIDTransition] switchToHCIMode (legacy)
Dec 19 21:06:11 localhost kernel[0]: [Bluetooth::CSRHIDTransition] transition complete.
Dec 19 21:06:11 localhost kernel[0]: [HCIController][configurePM] power parent ready after 1 tries
Dec 19 21:06:11 localhost kernel[0]: AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement: initialization complete
Dec 19 21:06:17 localhost kernel[0]: can't remove kernel __LINKEDIT segment - in-kernel linker needs it
Dec 19 21:06:17 localhost kextd[11]: in-memory mkext doesn't match on-disk mkext; non-boot kexts won't be loaded
I tried:
sudo kextcache -v 6 -f -u /
Which updates the kernel extensions on the boot helper volume,
but it does not work.
As for the firware updates, I could still install those booting from external FW disk.
Patrick

Mac Pro 4,1 w/RAID startup disk not showing

Just purchased used a 2009 Mac Pro which came without installation disks. The startup (and only) HD does not show on the desktop. I discovered that an Apple RAID card was installed and had one disk (the startup disk) connected to it. Apparently the startup disk had been part of a RAID from which all other disks had been removed. Can I simply remove the startup disk from the RAID and install it as a regular drive? Since I don't have the installation disks I don't want to experiment with it until I make a clone. As of now there is only the single drive installed in the system. The system seems to be fine as reported by Tech Tool Pro test suite, which indicated no problems with any component.
The battery on the RAID card needs charging but after several hours did not seem to be going anywhere. Can the battery be replaced?
Thanks in advance for any help.

Do either of you guys have an idea as to why the startup HD does not appear on the desktop? The battery no is indicating fully charged in RAID Utility but it's still conditioning, so I strongly suspect It needs replacement. Still, I'd like to solve this before pulling the card since I'm unfamiliar with the Mac Pro and if I can get things functioning nominally through menu operations so much the better.
There seems to be an anomaly in the RAID Utility setup since no "RAID SETS" nor "VOLUMES" are listed, but there is an HD icon labeled "Bay1" listed under "DRIVES" with State=JBOD, SMART=verified, Status=Good, Interface=SATA. It's a Western Digital Caviar. The RAID Utility help says that only a single drive can be RAID mode JBOD, but if this drive's status is JBOD doesn't that imply that a JBOD RAID set had to have been created before adding the drive to the set and thereby giving it JBOD status? IF this is so then the RAID set must have been intentioally deleted, or perhaps was auto deleted when other drives were pulled. I'm thinking that the drive does not show on the desktop because it still has status JBOD but it's RAID set is gone. Possible? If so, can I create a new JBOD RAID set and assign the drive to it without loosing the OS on the drive? Can I install a new drive without assigning it to a RAID set and then reinstall after pulling the card or will things get messed up if a disk that was once on the RAID card is reinstalled after the card is pulled?
Thanks for any insights.

Creating a Striped Raid from two used disks

I have *2 internal 300GB drives* in my G5. My start up disk has *4GB left* and my second drive has *80GB remaining*.
I want to make a *striped Raid* of the two disks to allow me to use the remaining 84GB as startup space.
I am guessing that if I backup the second drive and erase it I can add it to my startup disk without loosing its information and create the RAID. Is this the case?
Can anyone give me any pointers for the process and are there any draw backs to having a striped raid as a start up disk.
Thanks in advance for any help you can give me with this!

Are you using bootcamp for Windows?
Unless something has changed, if your startup disk is a raid (of any flavor), Windows will not see it.
You'll have to use the option key at startup to switch back to X.
If you are using sheepshaver or similar for OS9, 9 will not see the raid.
Both are minor, but can be annoying.
I believe you need 3 disks for a striped raid.
2 for the actual raid, and the 3rd for parity.
This setup allows for data recovery in case of failure.
a 2 disk raid striped is subject to data loss if one of the drives fails.
If I recsll correctly, both drives will be formatted during the raid creation process.

Help: Premiere is making my startup disk full, but I set everything to go on an external hard drive.

The iMac I am using is for the sole purpose of editing and nothing else. I have no idea what is making my startup disk full, and I can not locate the files that are filling the startup disk except the fact that it is telling me I am running out of space. The startup disk is a 250GB SSD, the second internal drive is 1 TB HDD. All of my premiere and video files are loaded ton a 4TB G-RAID.

Do you have your projects set to use a drive other than startup?
My 3 hard drives to edit AVCHD are configured as...
1 - 320Gig Boot for Win7 64bit Pro and ALL program installs
2 - 320Gig data for Win7 paging swap file and video project files
When I create a project on #2 drive, the various work files follow,
so my boot drive is not used for the media cache folders and files
3 - 1Terabyte data for all video files... input & output files

Adobe Photoshop Scratch Disk Full/Startup Disk Full error - PLEASE HELP

Dear ALL,
I have started to notice recently that when I run Photoshop CS on my Mac OSX Tiger, I am getting the Startup Disk Full error message. Never happended before.
Since my initial post I downloaded Macaroni (utility) and have run the daily/weekly/monthly backups, checked the /private/var/vm and /private/var/log and /Volumes. Nothing unusual there...
When I started getting this error I had 32GB left on a looked at my HD and I seem to have 32GB available on a 152GB drive. Now after deleting I have 76GB capacity left.
But when I tried to open a Photoshop PSD or TIFF file and do a crop I still get tge Startup Disk is Full error followed by the Adobe Photoshop error Scratch Disk is Full.
I am thinking of running the Disk Utility from the Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility and doing a Verify Disk and Verify Disk Permissions followed by Repair Disk Permissions. I will be logged into the machine whilst doing this. Is there any danger in this as I have read elsewhere that I need to do this from a bootable volume. If that is the case how do I create a bootable disk/cd? If not then what is the cure to my Disk Full as surely there is now nearly 50% FREE!!!!!
Please help.
Max

PS will always use the boot disk for scratch to some extent even with an alternate primary scratch disk.
Be sure to turn off Spotlight as it causes problems.
4GB of RAM would be nice, I understand small files don't work well if there is more than 4GB RAM but large files will. OS X uses free RAM as cache and RAM disk before using disk drives.
How much RAM is allocated to PS? More RAM would help.
A dedicated lean boot drive helps. Install just what is needed for your work, use a separate drive for data, and yet another RAID volume for scratch.
When in doubt, backup with SuperDuper, and do an erase and then restore. Always backup before repairing; and never, ever, use an old version of Tiger CD/DVD - like 10.4.2 on 10.4.7/.8. Use "fsck" instead, or your emergency boot drive.
Also, give Applejack a shot and delete the cache folders and swap files from time to time to keep a system humming. CS/CS2 and Tiger benefit nicely from more RAM.

Mac Mini 10.6 Server startup disk size increase problem.

Mac Mini 10.6 Server shows system startup disk sized 50GB with 20GB free. Disk utility shows partition sized 500GB with 470GB free. How can I increase size of startup volume without complete reinstall?

Is the disk partitioned?
Boot the operating system DVD, use Disk Utility from the Utilities menu (second screen of the installation process, just before you start the actual install) to ake a complete backup to an external disk, make a second backup (in case there's a problem with the first), wipe and repartition the internal disk (using Disk Utility), and reload.
You'll want to consider whether you want to mirror the two disks within the box, too; to set up RAID-1 across both of the 500 GB drives in the box. That mirroring can be established when you're wiping and repartitioning the disks.

Cloning an OSX 10.3.9 Server startup disk

Hello,
I'm having some problems with an XServe startup disk running out of disk space for no apparent reason. I'm going to do a clean install of OSX Server 10.3, but before I do I'd like to know if cloning the current startup disk to another, blank but larger drive within the XServe and then booting from that will have any affect on the system as a whole, or should it just work as normal? The startup disk is just that, and runs the applications. Otherwise it's an AxusYota RAID where all of the share points, backups etc. are kept/go to. The main applications running are Kerio Mail Server, Meeting Maker Calendar and FileMaker Pro Server.
Any thoughts?
Many thanks.
Dan.

If I clear out the swap I still only get about 450MB of free space each time I restart. I've tried so many ways of discovering what's taking up the space, but no luck as yet. That's why I'd like to install from scratch. I'll be cloning to a much larger drive, so I'm not worried about the disk space issue on the new drive. Am just curious as to how the whole setup will run off the clone...

"startup disk almost full" message - NOT TRUE! I have about 900 GB of free space. What can I do about this?

I have been getting repeated messages "startup disk almost full". I am on a very new iMac running Lion with the most up to date OS. This is a 1 TB iMac. When I first got the message, I cleaned almost everything but the applications off the disk. I now have more than 900 GB of space but again I am getting the message. I found someone reporting the same problem and he said Apple Care reported a but in the mail system. He found a Fix but it is not working for me. (He clicked the option key and opened finder, then went to Library/mail/mailbox/recovered messages and deleted the recovered messages. But I do not have any folder called "recovered messages" so can't pursue that fix. Any ideas?

I'm don't know about the new systems, but I remember that I set the % full to warn me. Your % might be set to 20% or something rather than 10% which is a preferable safety margin for many uses. I solved this start up disk problem by installing a 2 Tb internal drive and keeping my data files on external, raided, drives. A real show-stopper is when your 45 Tb external drive warns you that you're too close to OUT for comfort. And, Yes, I do keep it trash free.

Create a Raid1 on startup disk on Leopard server

Hi,
I need to create a raid1 after my Leopard Server installation. I want to mirror the startup disk with a other one.
Best regards

Creating a mirror with Apple DU destroys the data.
With 3 drives, use your system now as backup (you can pull it later) and use Disk Utility Restore to clone your system to the new mirror, after you create mirror. Then put the backup on the shelf for emergency backup.
SoftRAID has always been my choice for mirror (stripped reads and better feature) as well as for stripped RAIDs - don't know if it works with server though.
http://www.softraid.com - their pdf manual is worth a look.

Startup disk for SATA

I have created a DOS startup disk, in order to 'ghost' my the OS and application on the c drive (my data is on d) using the my "computer->format->create msdos startup disk" option. However, after booted it up from a, I found that it cannot detect my c or d sata drives. Did anyone over come this problem or did I do something wrong?
SATA Settings:
Native
S-ATA: only
P-ATA: yes
P-ATA channel: both
875P NEO FISR2
P4C with Intel stock fan (55C - 59C)
Corsair ValueSelect PC3200 CL 2.5 512K x 2
SATA 80GB Hitachi 7K250 x 2
Radeon 9600 Pro (OC to 518 Mhz)
Haupauge PVR
Sony DVD RW DRU-500A
Antec True Power 480
CoolerMaster ATX Case
FSB: 270
DDR: 333 at 2.7V
Vcore: default
Performance mode: Ultra Turbo

Thanks for the quick responce
I did set the boot order to:
1st) Floppy 1.44
2nd) SATA 1
and SATA raid to no but without success. In fact, I even tried the 'legacy' mode but it is still the same. :angryfire:I could boot from drive c if I remove the floppy, but the problem is that there will be no harddrive c and d to work with. Removing the floppy disk will result in normal Winxp boot - which is ok. My c drive is like a sitting duck if there is a crash on OS without a backup image

Duplicate Startup Disks in boot menu

I have two ssd drives, one in optical bay and one in standard hd bay. I have a clone of Yosemite on both drives. When I boot and gold down option key to bring up boot menu I am seeing duplicate entries for one of my startup disks. So instead of two startup disks to boot into, I see three. How would I
go about removing the duplicate?

Thanks. I had actually tried that with the boot mode set at UEFI and it didn't work, but I gave it another try set at legacy and it works fine.
The documentation for this seems confusing to me, though. Isn't this RAID card considered a mezzanine card? The documentation here says to enable the onboard controller to get a mezzanine card to work:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/unified_computing/ucs/c/hw/C200M1/install/RAID.html#wp1016766

XP no longer shows up as a startup disk

After upgrading to leopard today, my XP partition no longer shows up as a startup disk.
I had/have my windows partition on it's own drive that was NOT created with bootcamp. I pulled my osx disk from the my mac pro and installed windows on the disk i had in bay 2 using 100% of the disk (ntfs). after installing the bootcamp windows drivers, i reinserted the osx disk and all has been well for the last 4 months,... until the upgrade today that is.
Now, when i go to the 'Startup Disk' preference Windows is no longer an option. the disk still shows up in Finder and I can navigate around the file system.
Anyone have any ideas on how I can get it to show up again? I'd really rather not have to reinstall if i can avoid it.
thx.

I have exactly the same problem (well, maybe).
I have installed MacFUSE and ntfs-3g. I don't know if this is of any relevance, because I don't know if it was working directly before I installed them.
I have my OS X and NTFS volumes on the same physical disk. I also had to install Windows twice because I buggered it up the first time (formatted the partition as FAT32 and ran into a bunch of disk errors).
I also notice that in WinClone I have 2 Untitled Volumes at /dev/disk0s3 and /dev/disk1s1. /dev/disk0s3 seems to be the legit Windows NTFS partition, but I have no idea what /dev/disk1s1 is about. I don't know if it's been there all along or not but perhaps it is confusing matters and stopping the legit Windows volume/installation from being detected...? Should that second volume exist at all? It doesn't exist according to the Disk util.
edit: I used fdisk just to have a look at the two untitled partitions.
Jacbook:dev jacteh$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0s3
Disk: /dev/disk0s3 geometry: 10651/255/63 [171117408 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
Starting Ending
#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [ start - size]
1: 72 368 111 45 - 371 101 51 [ 218129509 - 1701990410] <Unknown ID>
2: 74 67 115 32 - 299 114 44 [ 729050177 - 543974724] <Unknown ID>
3: 65 114 111 32 - 353 115 52 [ 168653938 - 0] Netware 3.xx
4: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused
Jacbook:dev jacteh$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk1s1
Disk: /dev/disk1s1 geometry: 0/4/63 [63 sectors]
Signature: 0x0
Starting Ending
#: id cyl hd sec - cyl hd sec [ start - size]
1: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused
2: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused
3: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused
4: 00 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 [ 0 - 0] unused
I can hold the option key upon startup and manually enter Windows like that, but I'd prefer to be able to restart and boot Windows without having to hold a key.
Apart from not seeing the Windows boot volume in the system prefs pane, Boot Camp (and the rest of Leopard) has been excellent. I am impressed at the level of apple hardware support for windows. It seems to be much better than most native PC hardware.
I am dying for an answer. It's a fairly minor problem in the grand scheme of things, but **** it's frustrating.
Message was edited by: jacteh

How do I get more space on my startup disk

How do I get more space on my startup disk?

Freeing Up Space on The Hard Drive
1. See Lion's Storage Display.
2. You can remove data from your Home folder except for the /Home/Library/ folder.
3. Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on freeing up space on your hard drive.
4. Also see Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk.
5. See Where did my Disk Space go?.
6. See The Storage Display.
You must Empty the Trash in order to recover the space they occupied on the hard drive.
You should consider replacing the drive with a larger one. Check out OWC for drives, tutorials, and toolkits.
Try using OmniDiskSweeper 1.8 or GrandPerspective to search your drive for large files and where they are located.

How to install an OS on a Mac Pro without using a startup disk

Good Evening... I have purchased an Mac Pro 4,1 without any HDD attached to it and I have no startup disk for the installation an OS... When I do power on the Mac Pro, I get a flashing folder with a question mark in it! How can I be able to add an OS for two HDDs that I would like to install?

No. Boot the MP using the external drive. If you need to prep the drives, then:
Drive Partition and Format
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select the hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Apply button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
Once the drive has been prepped just clone your external drive to the internal drive:
Clone using Restore Option of Disk Utility
1. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
2. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
3. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag
it to the Destination entry field.
4. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to
the Source entry field.
5. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the Internal drive. Source means the External startup drive.

RAID's as Startup Disks

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