Setting up swappable RAID drives using 2 externals?

Hoping somebody might be able to offer me a solution to a little problem I seem to be
having setting up a OS X software RAID using 2 external drives.
I had 2 external drives set-up in a RAID:
2TB ioSafe
2TB WD
The WD failed and I bought a new WD 2TB MyBook. When I went to swap it into the RAID
it failed because the new drive was a bit bigger in terms of actual capacity than the other
drive was smaller than the ioSafe and therefore determined the size of RAID. I then
purchased ANOTHER 2 TB WD MyBook which is now a different size that the other one I
got. Now I know I can copy the data to one of the drives, create a RAID with the other
and the ioSafe and then copy all the data back. However, since I have this extra drive
I was hoping to create the ability to swap back and forth between the 2 drives. That
way I could remove one take it offsite and put in the other and rebuild the RAID.
Obviously this won't work with if the drives have different capacities.
I thought if I partitioned them both to 1.99 TB then the size would be determined by the
OS and not the drive, but somehow 1.99TB partitions on each drive are very different
in actual size.
Does anyone have any suggestions how I could make this work? Maybe I need some
third party software?

Use > Carbon Copy Cloner and make Clones instead of messing around with RAID.
I've been using CCC for years and have never been let down.
I do incremental backups on 3 different drives.
1 drive as I add new projects, photos and music
1 drive for daily backups
1 drive for weekly backups

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First time install probs with sata raid drive using k7n2g ilsr

hi all!!!
this is the first time i have tried 2 use a sata raid hdd. i dont use a raid drive for my c:, the raid drive is just extra space.
first i formated my pc. i installed the raid drivers, then xp. my pc worked fine. but then after a week it was time 2 try plug the drive in.
when i got my k7n2g ilsr motherboard i di not get a manual. so with the raid drivers installed, i just pluged in the raid drive. the drive seemed fine.... i formatted it and put a couple of games on. but after an hours usage the games would crash (high pitched tone instead of the audio, then full freeze).
i have tried putting these games back on my original drive and they work fine......
anyway....
i wanted 2 know if anyone had any ides what i was doing worng??? are there any settings in the bios that need changing when installing a raid drive????
thanks for any help!!!!!!!

ok still formatting drive..... looking over the files on the msi site for my motherboard it has 2 files available for raid drives:
the 'Promise Serial-ATA RAID Drivers' ( which i have installed)
and the 'Promise Serial-ATA RAID Utility' (which i dont hav installed)
do i need the Promise Serial-ATA RAID utility?? and if so how do i install it?? there are no setup files just dll files like the driver.... is istallation the same as the driver?
again, i thank u for your help!!!!!

Setting up XServe mirrored drives using disk utility

We are getting ready to format a server and reload the OS. We currently have 4 drives (250gb) each. I want to know the best way to set the drives up so they will be redundant. Do I include the first drive, which will contain the server software? This is an older G4 XServe box with 2gb of memory. I do not have a RAID card in this server. This will be software RAID.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Scot

Depending on how much redundancy you're looking for you can do it a number of ways, but here are the basics.
1) Boot from your installation media
2) After you choose a language you can invoke the Disk Utility
3) Use DU to wipe the disk and create a RAID 1 - add desired disks to the RAID*
4) Once the RAID is finished it will appear as a single drive
5) Quit Disk Utility and return to the Installation process and install the OS on the "Disk" which is actually the new RAID.
The set-up you want dictates the "desired disks" in step 3 above. Usually people create one mirror of the system disk so they have a disk to boot from if the primary drive fails. If the main system disk fails you simply pop out the bad drive and reboot off the mirror. You could do more than that but it really is overkill. If you really want more protection use the other disks for making back-ups so you can rollback or find accidently deleted files rather than more copies of the same disk.
Hope that helps,
=Tod

Setting up remote hard drive using air porter extreme?

Hi All,
Wondering how I set up my Mac Book Air to access a hard drive (LaCie 1 TB) thats plugged into my air porter extreme.
The intent is to be able to set this up so I can store a variety of data from my MBA and IPad and other Mac products. Not a computer guys so kinda need a set up for dummy directions....
Thanks,
j

Hello,
Here some info about setting up hard drive sharing with Airport:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1331

Creating a mirrored raid set with a hard drive that already has data on it.

I have a hard drive that I keep my photos on, and want to create a mirrored raid set that includes this drive, with its data, and another drive. How can I do this without erasing the drive with my photos on them? I am running 10.7.5 if that matters.
Thanks for any help.

Creating a Mirrored RAID reformats the drive and loads a substantial RAID driver and some tables onto it. When completed, the drive is inherently a member of a RAID set, and will continue to be so even if moved to another Mac.
because of this, you cannot create a RAID directly on a standard drive that contains data already in any reasonable, risk-free way.
To amplify what The Hatter has said above, Mirrored RAID is not Backup. Mirrored RAID only increases mean time to repair to keep a drive failure from becoming a Data Disaster. You still need a Backup. Mirrored RAID does not protect you from deletions from user error, crazy software, or "just because".
I run a mirrored RAID in my Home Server, which contains all the Users files for everyone in the Household. And I also recognize (after being burned by it) that Mirrored RAID is helpful, but not a sufficient Backup by itself. I back up the Users Drive automatically to an External drive using Time Machine. [So what I am advising is not just theoretical, I am living what I am advising.]
With WD Black 1TB and other very good drives in the under US$100 range, there is really no reason NOT to invest in several drives for such an undertaking.

Can I pull out a RAID drive and use in an external enclosure?

Hi everyone,
I have a Quicksilver with two identical drives formatted as a RAID setup (mirrored) and the G4 has reached its EOL (won't boot). Can I pull one of the RAID drives out and use in an external enclosure? Does the RAID formatting render it unusable in any other configuration? If that is the case, can I put the two drives into an external RAID enclosure?
Thanks in advance for any advice the community can supply!
Cheers,
James

Hi-
Can I pull one of the RAID drives out and use in an external enclosure?
Yes. Not as the original RAID setup, but as a drive, or part of a new RAID.
Does the RAID formatting render it unusable in any other configuration?
No. Just reformat the drive, and it's a regular drive, ready to go.
If that is the case, can I put the two drives into an external RAID enclosure?
A RAID set does not have to be internal. External RAID sets can be created, and successfully used.
Use firewire, or, if SATA, an eSATA connection to PCI controller.....
If the drive is, as you say, EOL, I would write zeros to the entire drive before reformatting.
Give Disk Utility a chance to map any bad sectors......

Setting up a RAID of system drives

hello everyone,
I am looking to add a second system drive for more hd space. I was planning on purchasing a second Raptor and setting up a RAID 0. will I need to format my existing drive, or can I just plug in the new drive and set up my RAID in DU?
...any feedback appreciated, thanks.
Dual-core PwrPC 2.0ghz G5 2mb RAM Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Ok,
You already have a Raptor as boot, most likely it's a 36 or 74GB with 8 MB cache and it's hooked up to your internal SATA ports.
To create a RAID O, you must match the two drives exactly. Erase w/Zero both of them, create the RAID O set in Disk utility and clone your boot drive back from a booted external drive using cloning software. (meaning you have to first clone the original to a external then boot from it and clone to the RAID O)
Problem: Western Digital has updated all their drives with a new SATA spec, also increased the cache to 16 MB. The PowerMac's can't handle the new SATA spec (supposedly the Quad can, but I'm hearing mixed stories)
So unless you find a 8MB cache Raptor, your going to need to spend more money.
The solution if your determined to have RAID O Raptors, is to buy two of them, preferably the new 10,000 RPM 16MB cache 150GB ones, and a Firmteck SATA PCI card (the only one that's bootable off of) with 4 internal SATA ports and 4 external ports. Then hook the internal Raptors to that.
The Firmteck card will also give you the option of hooking up external SATA drives in a powered enclosure, one cable to each drive. So you can expand if you wish.
With a RAID O, you must clone (for a whole boot drive) or backup (for files) quite regularly, like at least once a week for clone and daily backup for files. Since one should be doing this anyway, it's really no big deal. Because like the other poster said, RAID O is a bit more risky, one drive goes you lose all data as the data path is split. But the speed is worth it. So with a pair of 150GB Raptors your going to need a 250-300GB drive external Firewire 800/400 drive.
Now to keep a drives performance up, you shouldn't fill it more than 50%, and certainly shouldn't fill a boot drive more than 80%. So one can use a 250GB external drive for clone backup as long as the data on the 300GB RAID O doesn't go over around 240GB. (80%) Get it?
LaCie makes a good Firewire 800/400/USB d2 drive.
However if this is a bit too much to bear on your wallet, then what you can do is reduce what you have on the boot Raptor below 50% by moving just what you have in documents, pictures, movies and audio files into NEW folders on a second internal SATA drive (preferably one with 16MB cache not from Western Digital)
Once you have slimmed up your Raptor, then clone the whole drive to a external drive, option boot from it and make sure everything works correctly, repair permissions and test all software (some copy protected ones will need to be fixed). Once your are 100% certain it's ok, then Erase w/Zero the Raptor and clone the whole drive back.
What this will do is optimize the Raptor boot drive drive, free up disk space, de-fragment large files/apps and sort of tighten everything up to the most fastest part of your boot drive, the outer tracks, in the good part of the 50% side of your drive. (vs the inner tracks where performance starts to suffer)
Without the space hogging files that are now on the second SATA drive, your drive freshly optimized, the arm in the hard drive has less space to travel to get your data that Mac OS X, apps and random music files iTunes needs to constantly access.
Now I suggest using Carbon Copy Cloner to do your optimizations with, because I know how this program clones drives, in alphabetical order on the main directory of your boot drive. So Applications, Developer (if you have installed Developers Tools from Tiger install disk) Library, System and finally Users at the end (where it could expand without de-optimizing your drive)
Always follow these rules when cloning.
1: Don't run or do anything else while a cloning process is going on.
2: Always Disk utility Erase w/Zero option all new drives one time or in the case of a security issue.
3: Option boot from the clone and check it out.
4: Repair permissions BEFORE and AFTER each cloning.
5: Avoid partial clones because of copy protection schemes hiding files on the drive.
6: Avoid cloning to partitions, especially on the same drive, because if the drive fails mechanically your screwed out of your clone as well. Keep it a boot clone to a boot clone on a separate drive.
7: If you can keep two clones of your boot drive, just in case you get hacked or have a exploit, because when you hook up the second clone, it will get owned too and possibly erased. If this happens, C boot off the installer disk (write protected) and Erase w/Zero all infected drives and disconnect from the internet/network before hooking up that last clone.
I wrote a book, I hope it helps.
Note to others: Firmteck SATA PCI card will not work in PCI-Expressed based PowerMac's.
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/1eve4/

G-Raid drive disappeared while using FCP. Will no longer mount.

Ah! Help! I'm on deadline to edit a film trailer for tomorrow and my hard drive and all my footage just disappeared. I was using Final Cut Pro (6.0.6?) with my G-RAID 2TB drive as my scratch disc, and while I was using it, the drive unmounted. I tried powering it off. Restarting the computer. Swapping out new fw800 cables. Switching to a differnt fw800 port on my drive. Restarting again. The drive powers up but does not show. I then tried putting the fw800 cables into my other smaller drive. This also did not show up. I've used two sets of cables. I don't have any other cables to try. But it makes me feel like something is wrong with the Mac now. I am very tech inept and stressed about this deadline so any help would be great. I recently (a few weeks ago) upgraded to 10.5.8 and have had no problems. (this was after an intital upgrade several months ago that worked fine until all of a sudden it got stuck on the login page. I reset the pram and pressed C and and a number of things on start up and eventually rebooted from the leopard discs and reinstalled with no problems. just mentioning it in case). From time to time when I have started up FCP in the past, it has not been able to see my g-raid drive, but that just seemed to be a factor of me starting it up too late or out of order.
Imac 7,1
Intel Core 2 Duo
10.5.7
Any more info I can provide? Any help would be great! I am desperate to have my footage back and computer working so that i can make this grant deadline tomorrow!
Thank you!

Try doing a SMC reset, that might do it. Make sure ALL peripherals are unplugged when you do it and plug them one at time, test, next one, test etc...
_SMC RESET_
• Shut down the computer.
• Unplug the computer's power cord and all peripherals.
• Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
• Release the power button.
• Attach the computers power cable.
• Press the power button to turn on the computer.
Roger

Using additional bays for a RAID drive, and an eSATA RAID question too

I'm thinking about getting a Mac Pro soon, and my hope is that I can use the main drive bay for the OS and apps, and then use two of the remaining 4 bays to install two drives that I can set up as a striped RAID array. It appears that this can be done without having to buy the $1000 RAID card, but before I dove in I wanted to check. I'm not worried about losing data, because I'm good about external backups, but rather need to handle many thousands of large photo files quite quickly.
Also, I've got an eSATA RAID set up on my G5 now, and I understand that there are two more SATA ports on the main board of the Mac Pro, and potentially I understand I could plug that in there. But I dread getting the message "you've inserted a drive that isn't recognized, etc.." Anyone know what problems I might encounter here? OWC offers a patch cord that plugs in to them and then goes in to one of the expansion card slots as a kind of extension cord.
Thanks.

Right now on my G5 I have an external SATA two-drive RAID 0 enclosure (basically, just two 500gb drives in an OWC Mercury Elite Pro enclosure) that hooks up to the G5 by 2 SATA cables that plug in to a PCI card slot. My plan was, when I get the Mac Pro, to use the Newer Technology eSATA extender cables from OWC to hook up this drive box to to new machine. (http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/MPQXES2/) From what I've read in these fora it appears this is possible, and it seems also to be possible to just use the RAID tool in Disk Utility to set up the internal drives on in slots 1-4 on the Mac Pro.
Primarily I'm needing improved speed for handling lots of large photo files in CS3 and Lightroom. Just from using the RAID setup I have now I've noticed some speed improvements, and with the extra processing power of the Mac Pro I'm hoping to see even more once I make the leap.
Thanks to all of you, by the way, for your input.

I have a new MAcBook Air and my photos don't fit on the internal hard drive. I want to store my photos on an external hard drive which I will connect to my Air when using Iphoto. How do I set an external hard drive as the default drive?

I have a new MAcBook Air and my photos don't fit on the internal hard drive. I want to store my photos on an external hard drive which I will connect to my Air when using Iphoto. How do I set an external hard drive as the default drive in Iphoto?

Make sure the drive is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
1. Quit iPhoto
2. Copy the iPhoto Library from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.
4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.
Regards
TD

How do I set the HELP menu to use Indesign's local HELP files on the hard drive and not the web?

How do I set the HELP menu to use Indesign's local HELP files on the hard drive and not the web?
CS 5.0 launches the internet browser. > TO SLOW I DONT WANT THIS.
CS 3.0 uses the local help files > I WANT THIS FOR 5.0.

You're not speaking to the right forum for your request. Help is a Suite-wide feature and here is the forum where the Help application is discussed, and where the proper Adobe people hang out:
Community Help Application

Can I set up a RAID 1 Array by adding a drive to an existing install?

Hi All:
I have a K8N Neo2 with a 160GB Seagate SATA drive on it, and just bought an identical drive that I want to use for a RAID 1 array. My question is this: Do I need to do a complete reformat with the OS in order to setup RAID 1? With my old system and Ultra ATA drives, you could always add a drive, but I don't see any way to load the nVidia RAID driver after Windows has already been loaded.
Is this possible, and if so, what are the steps? I've enabled RAID for both SATA drives and can get into the RAID Bios, but beyond that, I'm lost. Also, I must have inadvertently setup an array, because it shows that I have one. I can boot into Windows if I turn off RAID in the BIOS, but would love to be able to install without a clean format.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Michael Tschirret

Michael,
You can create a RAID 1 Array, just make sure that the Drive with the Data is the Master and not the Mirror. You can have the RAID Controller build the image (Sync the Drives), and then you should be mirrored before you even boot back into Windows. The OS will not know the difference.
Take Care,
Richard

Using a expresscard FW800; G-Raid drive unmounts on it's own

I'm using a NitroAV Fw800 dual expresscard to connect my 500gig G-Raid drive that i use for video editing. I have never had a problem with it using Tiger.
Ever since I upgraded to leopard it is behaving strangely.
I mount the drive and all is well, (this is an example of the problem I'm having with it) I used the drive to provide 3.8 gigs of info to burn a disk recently. It burned fine and when it was done the drive just sat there, turned on, mounted for a few minutes and then it unmounts itself.
When it's doing something it behaves fine, when I leave it alone for a bit it unmounts itself and I get the error saying that it has been removed without ejecting it first.
If I connect it via the built in FW400 port, it stays connected and I have no issues. other drive I have are FW400 and they behave perfectly.
I have never had this problem before. what could it be?

I spoke with the company that manufactures the expresscard (NitroAV) again and they said it is a foul up associated with upgrading to Leopard and not installing fresh and reformatting the hard-drive.
Has anyone else had this problem?
Is there anyway to have Apple address this problem?
thanks for any help.
Carlos

I have my iPhoto set to an external drive yesterday when it was in use the usb disconnected i now have a message saying (your photo library is either in use by another application or has become unreadable) I have tried shutting down and restarting.

I have my iPhoto set to an external drive, when it was in use the usb disconected as i was moving my mac air, when i re-conected a message said (your photo library is either in use by another application or has become unreadable).
I have tried shutting it down and then re opening iPhoto but get the same message.
The reason for the external drive was there was not enough room on my hard drive, I have around 7000 photos on it.
is there a simple fix?
Regards
Dale

These are your options:
1. Restore the iPhoto library from the most recent backup that predates the issue.
          Advantages: Always works, if library damage is causing the problem and the backup is intact.
          Disadvantages: Impossible if you don't have a backup. All changes made since the backup are lost.
2. Repair or rebuild the library. Be sure to back it up first.
          Advantages: May solve the problem with no loss of data.
          Disadvantages: May fail. May take a long time if the library is large.
3. Scavenge the library with a third-party application called "iPhoto Library Manager," which you can find in a web search. From the application's menu bar (not the iPhoto menu bar), select Library ▹ Rebuild.
          Advantages: All images and albums should be preserved.
          Disadvantages: All books, calendars, and slideshows will be lost.

How to set an attached USB drive to automatic sleep using Airdisk?

Greetings all!
I am looking for a way to set my two USB drives to sleep when they are not being used. I only use them a few minutes a day, and don't want to run them down or use the electricity to keep them spinning.
It seems there has been some discussion about this but I haven't been able parse all the conversations. Some people seem to have gotten it to work, while others are relying on a drives "internal" mechanisms. It would be great if someone (perhaps at Apple?) could chime in with an overview of the problem.
Perhaps it is linked to the method of authentication - ie., (using Airport Utility 5.1), whether the Disks > File Sharing > "Secure Shared Disks" > is with "disk password" or another method?
Some have suggested a radio button for a future firmware/other update such as:
"Set drives to sleep when not in use" (Let's hope for this!), but I am hoping for a simple solution in the near future.
Any thoughts out there?
best to all.
*NB: I first posted this on Posted: Apr 4, 2007 12:23 AM and got NO response at all - hopefully I'll have more luck this time !

Hello Andy,
Thanks for your reply.
1. For using Microsoft Outlook rules, we need to keep the computer on, even after work or the colleague is on leave. That is not allowed in my company.
2. For sending an auto-reply email based on subject, that is impossible because the emails from customers are different and we don't have a basic standard.
3. Could you please elaborate how to set a transport rule in Exchange server to achieve the goal?
Thanks a lot in advance.
Steven
1. Only client rules require that the Outlook client remain open. An auto-reply rule should be server-side, so no need to leave Outlook open.
2. Yep!
3. Walk through the hub transport rules and you see one that replies with a rejection code. Thats the best you can get with a hub transport rule and not something I would recommend in your scenario. You could also search around for 3rd party solutions.
Twitter!:

Setting up swappable RAID drives using 2 externals?

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