Rebuilding failed drive in RAID mirror

I've inherited a 10.4.7 mailserver. It's first 2 disks are mirrored, and contain the OS and mail spool. Today, the 2nd disk failed. The raid is degraded, but things are running. I've gotten lots of conflicting info about how to properly repair the mirror. I have a new disk I want to use to replace the failed one. Are these hot-swappable? So far the concensus seems to be to power down the box, swap the good drive with the bad, power back up, and use Disk Utility. Exactly what to do in disk utility is my question.. one source says to drag the new good disk listed in the menu overtop of the old one in the raid set. Others just say 'click rebuild'. Has anyone done this successfully, and what procedure did you follow?
I really want to get this right the first time, since the machine is a mail server.
Thanks alot!

First, what's the machine?
The XServe is the only system that supports hot-swapping drives. Any other machine will require a power-down, disk-swap, startup process.
Apart from that, you may find that the OS will automatically rebuild the mirror once the new disk is available. If the array was created under 10.4 that option was available when the RAID was created. If it was created under 10.3, auto-rebuild was not an option and had to be explicitly enabled.
If the array is not set to auto-rebuild then you can use the GUI or the command line to initiate a rebuild.
The instructions you have for the GUI sound correct - drag the new drive into the RAID configuration pane. If you prefer the command line you'll need diskutil repairMirror, passing in the existing array and the new disk.

Similar Messages

Rebuild a drive in RAID after failure

I work at the University of Kansas, and after Sunday's storm, the campus was completely thrashed, including one of my servers. It's a G4 with 10.3.9 running on two hard drives in a mirrored RAID. Somehow during the storm, one of the drives failed. How do I go about re-initializing the drive and getting it back to into the RAID? I'll try it using the existing drive, but I may have to swap out the bad drive. Thankfully, I haven't had to do this before, but I want to make sure I don't mess anything up when I do it.
Any words of advice on this? I'm hoping it will sort of take care of things as soon as I choose to initialize the replacement drive.

TommyReynolds wrote:
Before you use BTRFS, be sure you have found a file system checker fsck(8) for it...Oracle Linux 6 ships with a btrfsck that has the repair option. If you're not using Oracle Linux, the latest version of btrfs-progs also contains btrfsck with repair, so check your distro to ensure you're running the latest version.

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

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

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

Mirrorred RAID Rebuild Failing

Hello,
I had a mirrored raid setup on 10.6.7, everything was working great for the last month, then today I went into disk utility and it said one drive failed. After checking the drive, there didn't seem to be any problem with its operation, so I can only assume it was a software/communication failure.
Clicking the rebuild button resulted in this error:
Rebuilding RAID set failed with the error:
POSIX reports: The operation couldn't be completed. Operation not permitted.
So I tried removing a disk, that also failed with the same error.
I then erased the failed drive which automatically removes it from the RAID configuration. Now when I try to add it back to the configuration I get the exact same error.
Has any experienced this issue and have any suggestions on how to get RAID back online?
Thanks in advance!
Michael

Thanks for your reply.
Yes, I am sure that the drives are working. I do not know what caused one of the drives to 'fail' as far as disk utility was concerned - but it was online when I checked it again.
I had issues while originally creating the RAID configuration, similar POSIX issues.
I have managed to get the configuration back online using the SoftRAID, but I am unable to create any new RAID configurations or modify existing ones using Disk Utility. Is it possible its an issue with POSIX and the drive USB drivers? Though I have tried with 3 or 4 different brand drives.
SoftRAID allows the drive set to be converted to a Disk Utility set after creating/repairing it - so thats what I have done for now.
I will try to setup/repair this all again once I have Lion installed and see if they fixed it in that version.
Any suggestions on how to get Disk Utility's RAID configuration on a Intel Core 2 Duo Mac Mini would be appreciated. I have filed a bug report with Apple as well. SoftRAID was a suggested alternative to a few other posts on the discussions for similar issues.
Michael

How do I force a Mac Pro Lion RAID 5 rebuild after replacing a failed drive?

Hi,
My Mac Pro RAID 5 (with Apple RAID controller card and RAID 5 volume with 3 hard disks) showed degraded RAID set message due to failed drive. After I repalced the failed drive, I was unable to add it back to the RAID set. So I tried to removed or deleted this RAID set so that I can rebuild the RAID set from scratch. No matter what I did, I was unable to delete the RAID set using the RAID Utility. Can anyone help? Thanks.

I have been posting in this forum several times yet I was not getting any help nor comment on my issue from anyone (except Grant above. Thanks and appreciate your support).
So I have to help myself by searching various ways to resolve the issue. I accidentally came across below findings and it solved my problem. So I thought I will post it here just to share with whoever may run into the same problem.
When I was trying to try to change to another harddisk, I noticed that I made a mistake in mixing up the drives when I put them back. That is for the last two drive bays(3 & 4), for some reason I put the disks backwards. That is drive 3 in Bay 4 and drive 4 in Bay 3. I did not realize that on the drive mount Apple actually labelled them as 1, 2, 3, and 4 respectively for Bay 1 through Bay 4.
With the two disks installed in the wrong sequence and even though one of them is a replacement disk, Apple RAID controller card still boot up the RAID set but showing degraded RAID sets and everthing is normal except it would not allow you to make the replacement disk as a global spare.
After I put the disks in the correct order, I was able to use RAID utility to make the repalcement disk as a spare and the system starting rebudiling the RAID set automatically (thought it took three days to complete).
Now my system is back to normal working. So the solution is to insure the disks are installed back to the Mac Pro in the same order (sequence including the replacement disk) when the RAID was set up. This is such a basic matter and I don't know how I missed it. Hopefully sharing this experience will help someone who may have similar problem. At lease this is the first thing to check before going any further.

Mac Pro RAID 5 not rebuilding after replacing a failed drive?

I have a Raid 5 on a Mac Pro and one of the three drives failed. The RAID set was degraded so I replaced the drive and made it a global spare. At this point the Raid Utility is supposed to try and rebuild the RAID array but nothing happens. Any help?
Thanks.

It appears that the two drives (drive 2 and 4) that were part of the raid set JBODSet2 are not attached to any raid set now. How do I get the raid set back?
Mac-Pro:~ john$ raidutil list driveinfo
Drives Raidset       Size      Flags
Bay #1 JBODSet1      480.10GB   IsMemberOfRAIDSet:JBODSet1 IsReliable IsJBOD
Bay #2 <none>          1.00TB   IsReliable IsNotAssigned IsRoaming
Bay #3 <none>          1.00TB   IsSpare IsReliable
Bay #4 <none>          1.00TB   IsReliable IsNotAssigned IsRoaming

XServe, Raid Admin 1.5.1, failed drive not rebuilding

I am using XServe with Raid Admin v1.5.1. One of my drives failed in my RAID 5 array. I replaced it with a new one, but it is not rebuilding automatically. I rebooted and my lower controller is showing as having failed but the drive I am trying to rebuild is on the upper side. When I click on the drive I want to rebuild in the raid admin drive window, it says Warning unknown array, but the other two drives on either side show as Raid ok. Help!

lun map is reqired but..
what exactly is "LUN map"?
and what is the comand for rapair it? in raid admin 1.5 and raid admin 1.5.1 i can't find anything help

Intel raid, find the failing (but not failed) drive?

One of my two Seagate drives is failing, I get intermittent system 'hangs', drive clicking, and the following error in event viewer:
Quote
"The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period.
When I built the system I created two volumes from my two hard drives. The first volume is a Raid 1 mirror set for my root drive. The second volume is a raid 0 stripe for my non-important stuff. The two volumes are named "Root_Mirror" and "Data_Stripe"
Here's the problem, How do I know which drive is on its way out? I believe the event viewer error is complaining about the mirrored volume set (iaStor0 = "Root_Mirror" volume?), but how do I prove this? (I am correct in thinking that WinXP talks to the Intel raid controller, the raid controller talks to the hard drives. Consequently WinXP can only report errors about the raid volume, not the underlying physical hardware.
I have a strong background in unix (Sun Solaris) disk and volume management. If this was a work machine, I'd run an "iostat -En" look at the error count for each device, then determine which lun was having problems. Once I know which lun is in trouble, I'd run a health check on the lun via the array management software (RM6 or whatever). I don't see these tools in WinXP or the Intel Matrix driver...
Here is a system report from the Intel Matrix storage console if it helps:
Quote
System Information
Kit Installed: 6.0.0.1022
Kit Install History: 6.0.0.1022
Shell Version: 6.0.0.1022
OS Name: Microsoft Windows XP Professional
OS Version: 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600
System Name: C2D6600
System Manufacturer: MICRO-STAR INT'L
System Model: MS-7238
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz
BIOS Version/Date: American Megatrends Inc. V1.2, 11/08/2006
Language: ENU
Intel(R) RAID Technology
Intel RAID Controller: Intel(R) ICH8R/DO/DH SATA RAID Controller
Number of Serial ATA ports: 6
RAID Option ROM Version: 6.1.0.1002
Driver Version: 6.0.0.1022
RAID Plug-In Version: 6.0.0.1022
Language Resource Version of the RAID Plug-In: 6.0.0.1022
Create Volume Wizard Version: 6.0.0.1022
Language Resource Version of the Create Volume Wizard: 6.0.0.1022
Create Volume from Existing Hard Drive Wizard Version: 6.0.0.1022
Language Resource Version of the Create Volume from Existing Hard Drive Wizard: 6.0.0.1022
Modify Volume Wizard Version: 6.0.0.1022
Language Resource Version of the Modify Volume Wizard: 6.0.0.1022
Delete Volume Wizard Version: 6.0.0.1022
Language Resource Version of the Delete Volume Wizard: 6.0.0.1022
ISDI Library Version: 6.0.0.1022
Event Monitor User Notification Tool Version: 6.0.0.1022
Language Resource Version of the Event Monitor User Notification Tool: 6.0.0.1022
Event Monitor Version: 6.0.0.1022
Array_0000
Status: No active migration(s)
Hard Drive Write Cache Enabled: Yes
Size: 596.1 GB
Free Space: 0 GB
Number of Hard Drives: 2
Hard Drive Member 1: ST3320620AS
Hard Drive Member 2: ST3320620AS
Number of Volumes: 2
Volume Member 1: Root_Mirror
Volume Member 2: Data_Stripe
Root_Mirror
Status: Normal
System Volume: Yes
Volume Write-Back Cache Enabled: Yes
RAID Level: RAID 1 (mirroring)
Size: 100 GB
Number of Hard Drives: 2
Hard Drive Member 1: ST3320620AS
Hard Drive Member 2: ST3320620AS
Parent Array: Array_0000
Data_Stripe
Status: Normal
System Volume: No
Volume Write-Back Cache Enabled: Yes
RAID Level: RAID 0 (striping)
Strip Size: 128 KB
Size: 396.1 GB
Number of Hard Drives: 2
Hard Drive Member 1: ST3320620AS
Hard Drive Member 2: ST3320620AS
Parent Array: Array_0000
Hard Drive 0
Usage: Array member
Status: Normal
Device Port: 0
Device Port Location: Internal
Current Serial ATA Transfer Mode: Generation 1
Model: ST3320620AS
Serial Number: 5QF1FGRZ
Firmware: 3.AAE
Native Command Queuing Support: Yes
Hard Drive Write Cache Enabled: Yes
Size: 298 GB
Number of Volumes: 2
Volume Member 1: Root_Mirror
Volume Member 2: Data_Stripe
Parent Array: Array_0000
Hard Drive 1
Usage: Array member
Status: Normal
Device Port: 1
Device Port Location: Internal
Current Serial ATA Transfer Mode: Generation 1
Model: ST3320620AS
Serial Number: 5QF1G7GE
Firmware: 3.AAE
Native Command Queuing Support: Yes
Hard Drive Write Cache Enabled: Yes
Size: 298 GB
Number of Volumes: 2
Volume Member 1: Root_Mirror
Volume Member 2: Data_Stripe
Parent Array: Array_0000
Unused Port 0
Device Port: 2
Device Port Location: Internal
Unused Port 1
Device Port: 3
Device Port Location: Internal
Unused Port 2
Device Port: 4
Device Port Location: Internal
Unused Port 3
Device Port: 5
Device Port Location: Internal

Well, I found a way to identify a failing drive, but it is not pretty..
download Seagate's "Seatools"
burn Seatools to bootable cd
go into bios / Integrated peripherals / on-chip ATA devices / change from "raid" to "ide"
F11 boot to cdrom
run Seatools quick check to almost instantly identify the failing drive.
run Seatools extended test to find a whole SLEW of failed sectors :shocking:
reboot back into bios, Integrated peripherals / on-chip ATA devices / change back to "raid" (pray this won't blow away your data, which it didn't but you don't know that until you do it once
setup RMA refund thru Newegg, order replacement drive, and hope new drive makes it before old drive goes belly up.
while patiently waiting for new drive, sit in amazement that the Intel matrix driver ignores all the errors that Seatools found in a matter of seconds..
Here's a question. Should I be pissed that the Intel raid controller isn't reporting a bunch of errors, or should I be excited that the Intel raid contorller can keep a raid 0 stripe functioning with a clearly failing disk drive. (is it a bug or a feature????)
{sigh}

How to restore a software raid mirror after a drive failure

i set up a software raid mirror with two hard drives in a mac pro. then one failed as reported by disk utility. i replaced the drive. it does not seem possible to restore this raid short of copying the files to a third location and then erasing and establishing a new raid. is there a way to simply "restore"?

Question: Do I need special software to administer the Mac Pro RAID Card or the Xserve RAID Card?
Answer: Normal administration can be carried out using the RAID Utility (found in /Application/Utilities) or by using the raidutil command. For more information refer to the User’s Guide or man raidutil.
The command-line utility should be available in Single-User mode.
To run RAID Utility, you may need to boot to an alternate source of Mac OS to be able to manipulate the Boot drive.
This article suggests using the Make Spare command:
RAID Utility 1.0 Help > If a Disk Fails
Message was edited by: Grant Bennet-Alder

Rebuild Raid mirror

Server 10.3.9
Someone bumped my middle drive and degraded the Raid. I tried to rebuild itt this morning but it just locked up. I can't start disk utility when the "good" drive is connected and if I look at server monitor it shows that that drive is rebuilding the raid "0 percent"
I am beginning to suspect that despite my being careful I got the drive numbers screwed up and selected the "good" drive number as the mirror and its trying to rebuild off a drive that doesn't exist (or something like that)
Anyway I want to stop this drive from from continuing and just format and restore from backup but, as I mentioned, I can't get into disk utility (or diskutil) while the "good" drive is connected. Anyideas on how to halt the process and let me reformat?
Bruce

I believe you must enable that option when you create the RAID. The option does not remain enabled if you check it after the fact, at least it doesn't on my system either.
According to the DU Help:
If you are creating a mirrored RAID set, choose whether to rebuild disks automatically with the RAID Mirror AutoRebuild checkbox.
Message was edited by: Kappy

Automatically Rebuild RAID mirror set

In disc utility intalled a raid mirror set of two external drives. Later, after using the combined drive, I opened disc utility again and selected 'Automatically Rebuild RAID mirror set'. I didn't select that while installing the raid set, but did that afterwards. Later discovered that when reconecting a drive this would automatically update the drive again.
This option 'Automatically rebuild raid mirrir set' stays selected while in disc utility. However, when I close and later open disc utility again this option is deselected again. Is this normal? Or does this option remain active when selected and closing disc utility and is it just that disc utility assumes that I've removed/connected one or more drives in the mean time when starting disc utility again? Giving me the option to select it again manually in order to rebuild the raid mirror?

I believe you must enable that option when you create the RAID. The option does not remain enabled if you check it after the fact, at least it doesn't on my system either.
According to the DU Help:
If you are creating a mirrored RAID set, choose whether to rebuild disks automatically with the RAID Mirror AutoRebuild checkbox.
Message was edited by: Kappy

Upgrade hard drive size with mirrored RAID

First of all thanks for your help.
I have a G5 XServe with (3) 250GB Drives
(1) drive is for the OS .... great perfect no change needed.
The other to drives are mirrored to eath other and hold 240GB worth of work.
I would like to buy (2) 500GB Drives to replace the 250GB Drives.
What is the easiest way to do this?
Idea 1) Will this work???
Break the raid by ejecting one of drives.
Put in one new 500GB Drive.
Copy all data from 250GB to 500GB
Eject 250GB drive
Put in other 500GB drive.
Re-set up Mirror with out losing data?
Idea 2)
Copy it all to an external drive....
Install new 500GB drives
Set up Mirror
Copy data back.
Hmmm... either way I'll have to set up all of my share points?
Thanks for helping me think this through.

Either path will work.
The first should be faster (the data only needs to be copied one), the second gives you a spare/backup copy of the data which might come in handy later.
Sharepoints are referenced by path, so as long as the new 500GB mirror is mounted in the same place as the existing 250GB mirror, your sharepoints should remain intact.

Got new miniMac servers with 2x750GB drives. How to setup and confirm RAID mirror?

Literally just got shiny new miniMac Server with the dual 70GB internakky hard drives/disks with
OS X 10.7.$ LION pre-installed. What a nice machine in a super cool box!
Seemed to bootup and run fine!
Now my issue (there will be more for this MAC newbie):
A. How to setup AND more importantly (item B below) CONFIRM that a RAID MIRROR is working?
Want nothing fancier than 2-nd drive is exact duplicate of 1-st drive at all times.
That is, an 'active and full up-to -the second" backup of the main 1-st drive.
I have done nothing to 1-st drive as it came from APPLE.
When I try to setup RAID set using DISK Utility, I get message about system(1-st drive) can't be used in a RAID or such.
yet I can add 2-nd drive to what I tink is a RAID set and then 'Enable' it.
It seems to add another entry to thr left-side of drves list panel but not sure that 1-st and 2-nd drives are BOTH in the new
"RAID SET' or that the set just consists of the "single" 2-nd disk?
B. I don't think that 1-st drive data is actually being duplicated to 2-nd drive.
For instance, how do I know that it was 'caught up' to match 1-st drive AND then is
staying caught up?
C. A 'RAID UTILITY' Icon brings up a not-available message, but I think that is because I don't
have HARDWARE RAID controller, just software RAID, correct?
D. What is 'Time Machine' and how does it play into this? I do assume that somehow/someway I need to
have off-machine backups also to be truly protected? How would a 2-nd identical miniMAC server be best
deployed to back each other up, in addition to their own internal RAID-ed disks that items above address?
My whole point of buying 2x750GB disks was to have mirror RAID set and
(foolishly) assumed that factory would set it up that way.
Please help me get setup right so when the inevitable crash happens,
I have some chance of recovering from it.
Regards,
Paul T
emai: [email protected]
Apple ID: N3UD
Phone: 610-613-0610

A. What are you adding to the RAID: a partition or a hard drive? You can only add hard drives to a RAID. RAID Utility should confirm that your RAID is working
B. No, I don't think so
C. It's because you haven't got RAID hardware.
D. Time Machine is a backup system in external drives. If you want, you can do backups in a external hard drive.

How do I remove one failing hard drive from raid set and replace with new one

Last Friday apparently one of my raid drives started failing.
As I mentioned on this forum I started getting continous beeping.
I was finally able to get the raid working at a degraded level. I ordered a replacement hard drive which is arriving today.
(In the meantime I made twice daily backups of my work.....)
Below was the message I got from the browser based raid software:
Blahblah 09    1000.2GB   RaidSet Member SamSung HD103SJ
Blahblah 10    1000.2GB     Free                 SamSung HD103SJ
Blahblah 11    1000.2GB   RaidSet Member SamSung HD103SJ
Blahblah 12    1000.2GB   RaidSet Member SamSung HD103SJ
(See this earlier thread if you wish!)
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/727867?tstart=0
At one point when I did the checked the browser interface I saw the message Failed and Degraded
As I said, I was able to work over the weekend on the degraded system.
This morning I got the beeping again and did the rescue and now I am running a "full raid" without the notice that one raid was "Free".
In any case, the new hard drive is arriving today.
What steps should I take to incorporate the new drive into the raid system.
I have one OS drive
and 4 tb raid drives.   One needs to be replaced with the new one that I am getting today.
Thanks
Rowby

Harm,
Regarding your comment:
Re: How do I remove one failing hard drive from raid set and replace with new one
Please tell me how to read the serial number from an individual drive rather easily, without un-installing them:
If you select the proper drive to change out, you only need to remove one drive and look at its serial number...
Step 1: Identify bad drive serial number using Areca's tools
Step 2: Turn off the computer
Step 3: Remove what you think is the bad drive based on following your numbered cable method, marked hot-swap bays, whatever
Step 4: Verify that the serial number matches the "bad drive" serial number from step 1; if it does great, proceed; if it does not match, go back to step 3
Step 5: Change out the CORRECT drive - that's the bottom line for this whole procedure
Cheers,
Jim

Failed to create RAID logical drive WAE-7371-k9

hi all we have cisco wae-7371-k9 , we wanna recreate RAID device using cd recovery. we booting on cd, and when we done with option numbers 2,3,5 succes but when we came on option 7, we cannot recreate RAID, it failed, following the log: Installer Main Menu: 1. Configure Network 2. Manufacture flash (done) 3. Install flash cookie 4. Install flash image from network 5. Install flash image from cdrom 6. Install flash image from disk 7. Recreate RAID device (WAE-674/7341/7371 only) 8. Wipe out disks and install .bin image 9. Exit (Eject and reboot) Choice [0]: 7 Recreate RAID device option is selected All disk data will be lost. Are you sure you want to recreate RAID array? [n]: y Saving random seed... dd: opening `/state/random-seed': No such file or directory No volume groups found Controllers found: 1 All data in logical drive 1 will be lost. Deleting: logical drive 1 ("") Command completed successfully. Controllers found: 1 A selected physical drive is not available for use. Command aborted. Failed to create RAID Logical drive. (1,2) MODEL: OE7371 FLASH: found, directory validated COOKIE: valid IMAGE: 4.3.5.7 FLASHDEV: /dev/sda what's wrong with wae ?if we run command show disk detail, all hard disk detected NO-HOSTNAME# sh disk det RAID Physical disk information: disk00: Ready JTX1470L 286102 MB disk01: Ready JTX1B24L 286102 MB disk02: Ready JTX1B9SL 286102 MB disk04: Ready JTWSEBWL 286102 MB disk05: Ready JTX0VYRL 286102 MB RAID Logical drive information: Mounted file systems: MOUNT POINT TYPE DEVICE SIZE INUSE FREE USE% Disk encryption feature is disabled. can you help, what's the problem .?

Budi,
Please turn off the unit, make sure you reseat the disks and then try the CD-recovery in the following way:
2,3, 5,8,7,8, remove the disk and 9
Please log the session then we can see how it went
Hope this helps!
Jorge

Rebuilding failed drive in RAID mirror

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