Software raid 1 drive(s) failed

Curious on what to do with a RAID 1 Drive (s) failure? I've searched the community and cannot find similar issue/answers.
Configuration:
One 1TB OS & App Drive is fine
Two 3TB RAID 1 Drives for Video scratch are fine
Two 2TB RAID 1 Data Drives are my issue
I'm using the software raid in OSX and it shows "2TB Data Drive/Mirrored Offline"
Both drives have "Failed" next to them
I have backup this Data Drive in Time Machine and a recent full back up to a single drive that is off site. I believe I have a good back up strategy with Time Machine and offsite back ups via Voyager S3. I guess we'll find out!
My question is how do I find out if it's a HW issue or SW issue with this configuration ? And then how to go about recovering them?
Initially when I looked in Disk Utility it appeared that only one of the 2TB drives had "Failed" next to it but now after a reboot "Failed" is next to both drives.
My initial hope was that one of the drives had failed and I'd be able to just replace that drive and the RAID System would rebuild from the other drive.
Any assistance would be appreciated.
Thanks

TommyH wrote:
My initial hope was that one of the drives had failed and I'd be able to just replace that drive and the RAID System would rebuild from the other drive.
RAID 1 just copies the same data to two (or more) drives at the same time, it's only for mission critical data loss requirements where a drive failure during writing would be catastrophic. Like taking purchasing orders or getting a phone call from ET for example.
RAID 0 is dangerous as the data path is separated to how many drives in the RAID 0 set, one drive glitches and all data is lost. But provides insane speeds.
RAID 5 is a much more reliable, it combines many drives (4 or more for more speed) splitting the data path but also has redundancy factor that if a drive dies it can be replaced and the data is recovered from the other drives. Usually a RAID 5 is in a external enclosure with it's own cooling and hardware controllers, not software based RAID where your CPU is being overloaded.
There are other forms of RAID some combinations like RAID 1+0, RAID 6, 10 and so forth, you can find out more about the more eclectic RAID types online.
RAID 5 is more ideally suited to video requirements for data storage, with perhaps a RAID 0 as a scratch disk or a RAID 0 + 1 (the RAID 0 is mirrored to another RAID 0) if your going to take a while working on it that increases the potential of failure.
Once the work is completed, it's sent to the RAID 5 where it's safe with it's redundancy and speed.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/RAID/Desktop
The thing to remmeber with the failed RAID 1 Data drive is the data is still on the drive, even though it failed and perhaps things are messed up a little on it on the directory. All the drive needs is to be told it's not part of a RAID 1 anymore, that it's a normal drive, a simple fix, but I don't know how to go about it.
You have two drives and two chances to recover the data off off, simply disconnect one data drive and reboot, see if it will mount and or you can repair the drive in Disk Utility.
If not pull one drive out and stick another blank one in there and download Data Rescue and simply recover the files to the new blank drive. DR works by simply reading the files themselve, not the file struture or anything else.
Software RAID is unreliable, it depends upon the CPU. Opt to get a external RAID where it's based in hardware instead. Use eSATA if all possible.
Also consider using backup software, like Carbon Copy Cloner which can be scheduled to make a backup of your data during the middle of the night. This way if something happens to either your boot drive or a data drive, the clone won't immediately copy the issue to the other drive like a RAID 1 does.
Also Carbon Copy Cloner makes "hold option" bootable OS X boot drive clones, which TimeMachine doesn't.
Also TM kicks in what, like once a hour? It's likely what caused your issue, CCC will work when you schedule it. TM is for consumers, not video pro's like yourself.
If you need even heavier iron as a external RAID setup and more expertise, then see these guys
http://www.macgurus.com/

Similar Messages

Adding A New Drive To A Software RAID 5 Array

Edit 3: Just mounted the partitions and I can delete them because they contain nothing special. Is it safe to expand the 2nd partition of each drive to fill up the left over 22 GB?
Edit 2: I just deleted all the partitions off of my new drive and created one partition, then added it to the array and it works just fine. My next question is, can I delete all the smaller partitions and expand /dev/sd[x]2 to reclaim all the space (about 70 GB)?
One of my drives failed and Western Digital sent me a new drive, except it was an external drive instead of an internal drive, so I cracked it open and the label looked different. Turns out it's just refurbished and it's the same model as my other drives (WD Caviar Green 3 TB).
I've read through the wiki article on Software RAID and created the partitions exactly the same as my other drives, but while creating the main 2.7 TB partition it says that the ending sector is out of range when it isn't. I'm new to all this so I have no idea what to do. From what I've read there normally aren't this many partitions per disk, correct? I also have md124, md125 and md126 for the other partitions. md127 is for the 2.7 TB partitions. I took the array out of my Thecus N4520. I have a 3 TB external drive and a 1TB internal, along with another 500 GB drive. Would I be better off at destroying the RAID set and creating a fresh RAID 5 set, considering I'm losing about 90 GB if I don't need the smaller partitions.
/dev/sdc
Disk /dev/sdc: 5860533168 sectors, 2.7 TiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 00636413-FB4D-408D-BC7F-EBAF880FBE6D
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 5860533134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 43941 sectors (21.5 MiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 41945088 46139375 2.0 GiB FD00
2 47187968 5860491263 2.7 TiB FD00 THECUS
3 46139392 47187951 512.0 MiB FD00
4 2048 20973559 10.0 GiB FD00 i686-THECUS
5 20973568 41945071 10.0 GiB FD00
/dev/sdd
Disk /dev/sdd: 5860533168 sectors, 2.7 TiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): C5900FF4-95A1-44BD-8A36-E1150E4FC458
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 5860533134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 43941 sectors (21.5 MiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 41945088 46139375 2.0 GiB FD00
2 47187968 5860491263 2.7 TiB FD00 THECUS
3 46139392 47187951 512.0 MiB FD00
4 2048 20973559 10.0 GiB FD00 i686-THECUS
5 20973568 41945071 10.0 GiB FD00
/dev/sde
Disk /dev/sde: 5860533168 sectors, 2.7 TiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 2B5527AC-9D53-4506-B31F-28736A0435BD
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 5860533134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 43941 sectors (21.5 MiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 41945088 46139375 2.0 GiB FD00
2 47187968 5860491263 2.7 TiB FD00 THECUS
3 46139392 47187951 512.0 MiB FD00
4 2048 20973559 10.0 GiB FD00 i686-THECUS
5 20973568 41945071 10.0 GiB FD00
new drive: /dev/sdf
Disk /dev/sdf: 5860467633 sectors, 2.7 TiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 93F9EF48-998D-4EF9-B5B7-936D4D3C7030
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 5860467599
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 5813281700 sectors (2.7 TiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 41945088 46139375 2.0 GiB FD00 Linux RAID
2 47187968 47187969 1024 bytes FD00 Linux RAID
3 46139392 47187951 512.0 MiB FD00 Linux RAID
4 2048 20973559 10.0 GiB FD00 Linux RAID
5 20973568 41945071 10.0 GiB FD00 Linux RAID
when I type in 5860491263 as the end sector gdisk does nothing, just wants more input. If I type +2.7T it accepts it, but really it just creates a partition that's 1KB in size!
I am able to create a 2.7 TB partition with an end sector of 5860467599, this won't screw anything up will it?
Edit 1: just tried it and got this
[root@ra /home/bran]# mdadm --add /dev/md127 /dev/sdf2
mdadm: /dev/sdf2 not large enough to join array
[root@ra /home/bran]# fdisk -l /dev/sdf
Disk /dev/sdf: 2.7 TiB, 3000559428096 bytes, 5860467633 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 93F9EF48-998D-4EF9-B5B7-936D4D3C7030
Device Start End Size Type
/dev/sdf1 41945088 46139375 2G Linux RAID
/dev/sdf2 47187968 5860467599 2.7T Linux RAID
/dev/sdf3 46139392 47187951 512M Linux RAID
/dev/sdf4 2048 20973559 10G Linux RAID
/dev/sdf5 20973568 41945071 10G Linux RAID
Last edited by brando56894 (2014-04-28 00:47:29)

Sorry I numbered them to show the flow of information, this was also just a place for me to store info as I worked through it. I managed to get it to work by creating a partition that takes up the whole drive and is actually 22 GB larger than all the other drives (since I found out that the had root, swap and home partitions that are no longer needed).
I should be able to resize the other partitions without a problem, correct? They're EXT4. Should I unmount the raid array and do them individually, remount the array, let it sync and do the next? Or just unmount the array, resize all of them, mount it and let it sync?

Software RAID failing constantly

Dear all,
I need help as I cannot work out what is going wrong the the Mirrored RAID i set up.
I bought 2 x 1TB drives and setup Mirrored RAID (software) through the GUI Disk Utility Application. I assumed it would all "just work".
After about a month the RAID failied. It happened after I ran TechTool Pro 5. Could this have caused permanent damage which leads me to where I am today (see below)? I unplugged the drives and plugged into my laptop (I don't know why I didn't just unplug and plug them into the Mac Mini they were in). Anyway it came up saying "Rebuilding" and it took about 9 hours. All was good again.
Until early October 2009 when Disk Utility reported that the RAID was "degraded" and one of the drives had "failed".
I was pretty shocked as it was a new drive. I thought the best thing to do would be to get a new 1TB drive to rebuild the RAID and then deal with the failed drive.
It took over 2 weeks to get the new drive and enclosure (long story). I setup the new drive last night, plugged it in and the "Rebuilding" message came up with the same "it will take 9 hours message".
I left it over night and when I got up Disk Utility told me that the older drive of the two has "failed". There has to be something weird going on here and this is where I need your help.
Configuration
1. The drives are 1TB Hitachi 3200rpm SATA I/II, 32 MB Cache drives
2. The 'old' enclosure is an Icecube G2 SuperS 800/400/USB2/eSata 3.5" Enclosure
3. The 'new' enclosure is an OWC Mercury Elite-AL, Quad Interface eSata/FW 400/FW 800/USB 2/USB 1
4. The Mac Mini only has one FW800 port and I connect the 2 drives up in serial.
<hr />
Here is the behaviour I'm seeing now.
I'll start with both drives off and turn both on.
1. Both drives mount in Disk Util
2. 20 seconds later a message comes up about rebuilding slices for "disk1 ... ?" and "disk (null)" and disk util crashed 2 seconds later (thus why didn't catch all of the message)
3. I turn to the terminal:
bsmith@kanga ~ $ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUIDpartitionscheme *298.1 Gi disk0
1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Mini 297.8 Gi disk0s2
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUIDpartitionscheme *931.5 Gi disk1
1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk1s1
2: Apple_RAID 931.2 Gi disk1s2
3: Apple_Boot Boot OSX 128.0 Mi disk1s3
/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUIDpartitionscheme *931.5 Gi disk2
1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk2s1
2: Apple_RAID 931.2 Gi disk2s2
3: Apple_Boot Boot OSX 128.0 Mi disk2s3
/dev/disk3
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_HFS terra *931.2 Gi disk3
bsmith@kanga ~ $
bsmith@kanga ~ $ sudo diskutil listRAID
Password:
RAID SETS
===============================================================================
Name: terra
Unique ID: 2AC46C49-5F0B-4BD5-B1FE-C322A6F51DD9
Type: Mirror
Status: Degraded
Size: 999860895744 B
Rebuild: automatic
Device Node: disk3
Apple RAID Version: 2
# Device Node UUID Status
0 disk1s2 A12D748F-0779-4217-8C75-B31D9AE45B4E 0% (Rebuilding)
1 disk2s2 CF03D24E-AB5D-4F86-A7B1-26A1F4589CB7 Online
===============================================================================
bsmith@kanga ~ $
Run it again 10 seconds later:
bsmith@kanga ~ $ diskutil list
It just hangs.
bsmith@kanga ~ $ sudo diskutil listRAID
It just hangs.
4. Now I turn off the 'old' drive and look at the terminal (that was hanging). When I turn it off I'm told (through the Hardware Growler Growl extension to show the status of hardware) that the old drive ("Macpower"), the new drive ("OWC") and the RAID disk ("terra") have all unmounted. The diskutil commands follow.
bsmith@kanga ~ $ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUIDpartitionscheme *298.1 Gi disk0
1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Mini 297.8 Gi disk0s2
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUIDpartitionscheme *0.0 B disk1
1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk1s1
2: Apple_RAID 931.2 Gi disk1s2
3: Apple_Boot Boot OSX 128.0 Mi disk1s3
/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUIDpartitionscheme *931.5 Gi disk2
/dev/disk3
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_HFS terra *931.2 Gi disk3
bsmith@kanga ~ $
bsmith@kanga ~ $ sudo diskutil listRAID
RAID SETS
===============================================================================
Name: terra
Unique ID: 2AC46C49-5F0B-4BD5-B1FE-C322A6F51DD9
Type: Mirror
Status: Degraded
Size: 319728959488 B
Rebuild: automatic
Device Node: disk3
Apple RAID Version: 2
# Device Node UUID Status
0 disk1s2 A12D748F-0779-4217-8C75-B31D9AE45B4E 0% (Rebuilding)
1 -none- CF03D24E-AB5D-4F86-A7B1-26A1F4589CB7 Online
===============================================================================
bsmith@kanga ~ $
I don't know alot about this output, though its weird that disk2 is still in the list but only shows the GUIDpartitionscheme. And its interesting that disk1 is also in the list but shows 0.0B against the GUIDpartitionscheme for it.
5. Just for kicks I turn off the 'new' drive aswell and run the commands again. When i do it Hardware Growler doesn't say anything has unmounted (I guess since they all did so before).
bsmith@kanga ~ $ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUIDpartitionscheme *298.1 Gi disk0
1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Mini 297.8 Gi disk0s2
bsmith@kanga ~ $ sudo diskutil listRAID
Password:
No RAID sets found
As expected I guess.
6. Now I'll turn both drives back on and confirm I get back to the same state I was in before after both drives were turned on.
This time I get the Hardware Growler message that both drives have mounted followed by the RAID drive about 20 seconds later.
bsmith@kanga ~ $ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUIDpartitionscheme *298.1 Gi disk0
1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Mini 297.8 Gi disk0s2
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUIDpartitionscheme *931.5 Gi disk1
1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk1s1
2: Apple_RAID 931.2 Gi disk1s2
3: Apple_Boot Boot OSX 128.0 Mi disk1s3
/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUIDpartitionscheme *931.5 Gi disk2
1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk2s1
2: Apple_RAID 931.2 Gi disk2s2
3: Apple_Boot Boot OSX 128.0 Mi disk2s3
/dev/disk3
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_HFS terra *931.2 Gi disk3
bsmith@kanga ~ $
bsmith@kanga ~ $ sudo diskutil listRAID
RAID SETS
===============================================================================
Name: terra
Unique ID: 2AC46C49-5F0B-4BD5-B1FE-C322A6F51DD9
Type: Mirror
Status: Degraded
Size: 999860895744 B
Rebuild: automatic
Device Node: disk3
Apple RAID Version: 2
# Device Node UUID Status
0 disk1s2 A12D748F-0779-4217-8C75-B31D9AE45B4E 0% (Rebuilding)
1 disk2s2 CF03D24E-AB5D-4F86-A7B1-26A1F4589CB7 Online
===============================================================================
bsmith@kanga ~ $
Now let me run the commands again:
MMM, the exact same result is returned - it didn't hang this time.
It's 21:44, I'll leave this a while and see if the rebuilding continues.
Its 13 mins later and this time the commands are just hanging. Before I went away at 21:44 the lights on the front of the drives where flashing showing something was happening. They had stopped by the time I returned.
7. Now I turn off the 'new' drive and run the terminal commands again. When I turn it off I'm told by Hardware Growler that the new drive ("OWC") and the RAID disk ("terra") have both unmounted. Last time (when the 'old' drive was turned off) Growler told me all 3 drives unmounted. The diskutil commands now show.
bsmith@kanga ~ $ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUIDpartitionscheme *298.1 Gi disk0
1: EFI 200.0 Mi disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Mini 297.8 Gi disk0s2
/dev/disk1
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUIDpartitionscheme *931.5 Gi disk1
It hangs at this point and hasn't completed yet.
bsmith@kanga ~ $ sudo diskutil listRAID
Password:
RAID SETS
===============================================================================
Name: terra
Unique ID: 2AC46C49-5F0B-4BD5-B1FE-C322A6F51DD9
Type: Mirror
Status: Offline
Size: 999860895744 B
Rebuild: automatic
Apple RAID Version: 2
# Device Node UUID Status
0 disk1s2 A12D748F-0779-4217-8C75-B31D9AE45B4E Failed
0 -none- CF03D24E-AB5D-4F86-A7B1-26A1F4589CB7 Missing/Damaged
===============================================================================
bsmith@kanga ~ $
So HELP PLEASE!. Does the above provide enough information to suggest to someone with more knowledge than me about this, what is going on and what can I do to fix this? Let me know if there are any more tests I can run.
I have a backup of the data so can erase and recreate the RAID drive. But what would stop this happening again? Could it have been TechTools Pro 5 which was running when the problem first happened that caused some permanent damage?
Any and all help appreciated.
Thank you,
Brooke

Thanks ridogi and Antonio for your replies,
For clarification, both drives have dual FW 800 to allow them to be connected. No FW 400 involved (I'm not that silly .
I can't say i've done extensive research into setting up RAID drives but I've never come across advice to not use multiple external drives. Here is an extract from a Nov 2007 MacTech article on using RAID for backup:
{quote}
The Desktop Mac User:
The second user I want to look at is the professional who relies on his desktop Mac for his business. He is a lawyer, developer, architect or other professional whose business relies totally on the contents of his computer. If he loses the files on his computer, his business will really suffer. In addition, the time lost when dealing with a failed hard disk is money down the drain. This user relies on a three disk mirror volume. His Mac has two internal SATA disks which are used as the primary and secondary disks of a mirror volume. If one of the disks fails at any given point, the other one will take over and become the new primary disk, so his files are always protected from a hard disk failure. The third disk is an external FireWire disk which is also a secondary disk. It is stored offsite (either at home in a fireproof safe or at another safe location). Every Friday, he brings this third disk into his office and connects it to his desktop Mac. Once this disk is connected, a mirror rebuild starts automatically. He can perform this rebuild as he continues to use his Mac during the day. At the end of the day, when he shuts his Mac down, he disconnects his external secondary disk and returns it to its offsite location. This offsite secondary disk becomes his insurance against his building getting broken into or his building burning down. Like the laptop user, if his Mac gets destroyed, he can just purchase a replacement Mac and then boot up from his external secondary disk. At most, he will use one week's worth of work.
{quote}
So I just assumed it is ok to use external drives. This is discussing a software product called SoftRAID and perhaps that is able to handle the situation. Or perhaps one external drive is ok???
My plan, developed when deciding to buy the Mac Mini April 2009 was to amortize costs by buying external drives first for doing backups and then buying a NAS within 12 months. I guess I should have just gone the NAS.
However ridogi I see you've recommended WiebeTech which don't seem to have NAS devices but DAS (direct attached storage) as the devices are connected directly to a network machine via Firewire etc. (Whereas NAS connects via the Network - I'd connect such a device to the Airport wireless router). Do you prefer DAS over NAS? I guess the downside of NAS is that the complexity is somewhat greater.
And reading http://www.wiebetech.com/just-say-no-to-nas/ they say:
{quote}
Let's face it - Networked or "shared" storage is a great feature but most NAS devices are just too slow for many applications. 3MB/s for a NAS device is common and 10MB/s is considered fast. Direct Attached Storage (DAS) performs much faster while still having the ability to be "shared". The RTX400-QR can transfer data to your computer at speeds exceeding 100MB/s.
{quote}
How can this be? If connected via Gigabit ethernet (128MB/s) then isn't that faster?
Though it is true that if you connect via Wifi then the best speeds you are going to achieve is 6.75 MB/s (802.11g) or 17.5 MB/s (802.11n).
Of course the speed advantages for DAS are only going to be on the machine its connected to as the other machines will connect to it (via the machine its on) over the network anyway!
Why I like the idea of NAS is to move the drives away from the Mini (noise and powerpoint reasons), make it easier to share with other Macs/PCs in the house (including via SMB) and I have a vague hope that this might stop the delay caused by the connected external drives spinning up when an open/save dialog box is activated (or is this just me?!).
Your thoughts appreciated! And thanks for the help so far.
Cheers,
Brooke

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

Failed Software Raid 1, trying to virtualize but getting I/O error failure

I will try to summarize all what has happened and where I'm at now currently:
Server is 2008 R2 (DC, exchange, IIS, SQL, etc) setup originally setup with software RAID 1. At some point years ago the software RAID had failed and the second disk wasn't part of the mirror anymore and it was never fixed in disk management.
Last week the server and wouldn't boot as the primary drive failed. I selected secondary plex during startup just to see if that disk was still functioning, which to my suprise it did boot up but data was years old.
At that point, I inserted Windows 2008 R2 DVD and started System Recovery from previous backup onto secondary plex drive. Once complete, the server was backup and running. Changed the system startup variable to secondary plex so it would
boot that drive if restarted.
I am now trying to virtualize the server using disk2vhd in order to move it onto new hardware, however each time I try it fails with I/O error. I have re-tried multiple times stopping all major services to minimize I/O during disk2vhd, but still errors out
about 3/4 way through. I have run checkdisk and it repaired a few bad sectors on the secondary plex drive, yet still fails during disk2vhd. I am currently running a defrag on the disk as it reported 36% defragmention and will try offline disk2vhd
once complete using System Center VMM 2012 (not R2 as that's been removed - found that out the hard way!).
I'm worried this disk has underlying errors which is why it failed years ago and Windows broke the mirror and why it won't work with online disk2vhd.
I have attached a picture of Disk Management which I find interesting as it shows Disk 0 as unknown (Not Initialized), Disk 1 having errors (can "Reactivate Disk" though unsure if that does anything destructive?), and then a missing disk at the
bottom which I can also reactivate. I'm not sure if restoring the last working backup from disk 0 somehow messed up Disk 1 or confused it? BIOS reports Disk 0 as 0MB so I'm thinking that drive is no good anymore.
I guess what I'm looking for with this post is any answer or suggestion as to why disk2vhd might be failing, whether an offline disk2vhd maybe a better successful option, and what (if anything) I should do in Disk Management with these drives in their current
state. I don't have a replacement 500GB drive for the mirror and I don't plan on getting one as I already have a new Hyper-V 2012 Core server setup to replace this failing server. I just can't seem to get it to virtualize using online disk2vhd and wondering
if it has something to do with the current drive setup/situation?

Hi,
à
I am now trying to virtualize the server using disk2vhd in order to move it onto new hardware, however each time I try it fails with I/O error.
Would you please let me know the complete error message that you can get?
Please refer to following article and check if can help you.
Troubleshooting Disk Management
à
I guess what I'm looking for with this post is any answer or suggestion as to why disk2vhd might be failing, whether an offline disk2vhd maybe a better successful option
In addition, this issue seems to be more related to Disk2vhd. I suggest that you should post the question in
the Disk2vhd forum. I believe we will get a better assistance there.
If anything I misunderstand or any update, please don’t hesitate to let me know.
Hope this helps.
Best regards,
Justin Gu

Server 2003 Software RAID-1 Fail - System won't boot

Have a Windows 2003 Server with software RAID-1, and the primary drive failed.
I tried editing the boot.ini of the 2nd drive but all I get is a black screen and blinking cursor.
The drive had 2 partitions. One of them shows up when we plug the drive into a PC, but the 2nd partition is unrecognized.
Boot.ini was:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=" "
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Windows Server 2003, Standard" /noexecute=optout /fastdetect
I tried adding this after:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS=" "
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Windows Server 2003, Standard" /noexecute=optout /fastdetect
Any ideas?

Hi,
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10.9 update effects on software RAID drives

Hi everyone,
I would like to update my mac pro from 10.8 to 10.9 . I backed up everything but my major concern is that I have 2 HDDs that are RAIDed by the OS (software). The OS is on a seperate PCI SSD from OWC.
Is there any change that the software raid drives won't mount properly after 10.9 update?
Thanks,

Hi.
I tried the upgrade yesterday on a Mac Pro with a stand alone system drive and a mirrored RAID set currently being used as a scratch disk.
System disk is fine, but the scratch disk gives me the 'Initialize Disk?' dialog
So DON'T just upgrade to 10.9 when you are using a software RAID.
I didn't loose valuable data, it was primarily a lot of Final Cut render files, but I still wanna find a way to do the upgrade with having to copy and de-RAID the disks.
I'll be posting when I have any information on whats going wrong/how to do the upgrade and if any one gave any info, please share.
/Krut

Will OSX software Raid-0 on external drive be regonized elseware?

Are RAID setups created in Disk util recognized in other computers. Say i have 2 external drives (over eSata on my 08 mac pro) in a raid 0 from disk util, can I plug these two drives into another mac pro and have them work?
Basically, are software raid setups from disk utilily readible from all macs?

Both systems would have to have their own controllers or ports, but yes, they should move and work just the same on both.
There are Port Multiplier cases and controllers, and there are the 2 ODD ports people use, or direct connect SATA external controllers.
You can even create a RAID internal or external and move it and it will work, or change the drive bay and order of your drives, the RAID will still work and be intact.
What often doesn't work are eSATA/FW or eSATA/USB cases.
Mac Pro Discussion focus on using and expanding is here:
http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=194

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

Failed Disk Utility Software Raid

My external RAID hasn't been mounting as easily as normal so I opened Disk Utility to repair disk or whatnot and it shows one drive as failed. Not sure what this means or how I should proceed. I'd be surprised if that drive is dead. What does the Rebuild button do? I have backed up all the data on the mirror, but am not sure how to proceed. I'd like to keep this info on the RAID if possible.
Dual2 G5 & Powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.4)

From Disk Utility's Help:
A disk in a RAID set has failed or is missing
Disk Utility monitors the status of the disks in a RAID set. If you see a message that a disk is missing or has failed, there are several things you can try to solve the problem.
If a disk is missing, make sure it is connected to power and turned on, and that it's connected to your computer. If you are using a FireWire or USB disk, you may need to disconnect it then connect it again.
Use the First Aid pane to repair the disks in the RAID, then check the RAID set to see if it still reports an error. You may need to unmount the RAID set to repair the disks.
In some cases, you might need to quit and reopen Disk Utility or restart your computer and then check the RAID set.
If you are using a mirrored RAID set, there might be an error while writing data to the disk. Click Rebuild in the RAID pane of Disk Utility.
If you are using a striped RAID set, delete the damaged RAID set. Your data may be lost. Be sure to back up the disks in your RAID set and other data regularly.
If you have a persistent problem with a disk in a mirrored RAID set, you may need to replace it. After you replace the damaged disk, click Rebuild to rebuild the RAID set.[/i[
G4 450 MP Gigabit Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Partitioning two drives to enable OSX and XP software raid.

Hi Guys,
I have found out that XP support software raid 0 so I am wondering if I can do this.
I have 4 disks in the bays.
Disk 1 - OSX System disk
Disk 2 - XP System disk.
Now I want to partition Disks 3 and 4 into 4 partitions and use OSX software raid on 2 of the partitions and XP software raid on the other two.
I am pretty sure that this is ok with XP, is it ok with osx as well?
Cheers
Andy

Hi AndrewCapon;
Could you please tell me exactly what you expect to gain with RAID? I notice that you have never told us what form of RAID you expect to implement here. Different versions of RAID provide different benefits.
I think this is the much larger questions. So often I find that users have totally unrealistic expectations of what RAID will do for them.
Also please be aware that RAID is in no way a replacement for backup. In fact if you use RAID for storage of your data a good backup plan is crucial.
Allan

Software raid won't boot after updating to "mdadm" in mkinitcpio.conf

After a power outage I've discovetred the config I was using (with raid in mkinitcpio.conf) no longer works, it's mdadm now - that's fine. I've updated that and re-run mkinitcpio successfully, however my system is unable to boot from the root filesystem /dev/md2 like so:
Waiting for 10 seconds for device /dev/md2 ...
Root device '/dev/md2' doesn't exist. Attempting to create it.
ERROR: Unable to determine major/minor number of root device '/dev/md2'.
You are being dropped to a recovery shell
Type 'exit' to try and continue booting
/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
[ramfs /]#
As far as I can see from reading various threads and http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ins … AID_or_LVM I'm doing the right things now (although I'm not using lvm at all, which makes the installation document a little confusing).
I think I've included all the appropriate bits of config here that should be working. I assume I've missed something fundamental - any ideas?
menu.lst:
# (0) Arch Linux
title Arch Linux [/boot/vmlinuz26]
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/md2 ro
initrd /kernel26.img
mkinitcpio.conf:
HOOKS="base udev autodetect pata scsi mdadm sata filesystems"
fstab:
/dev/md1 /boot ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/md2 / ext3 defaults 0 1
mdadm.conf
ARRAY /dev/md1 level=raid1 num-devices=2 metadata=0.90 UUID=7ae70fa6:9f54ba0a:21
47a9fe:d45dbc0c
ARRAY /dev/md2 level=raid1 num-devices=2 metadata=0.90 UUID=20560268:8a089af7:e6
043406:dbdabe38
Thanks!

Hi magec, that's quite helfpul - I've certainly got further.
Before I was doing this to set up the chroot (which is what is suggested in the wiki article about setting up software raid):
mdadm -A /dev/md1 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1
mdadm -A /dev/md2 /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2
mount /dev/md2 /mnt
mount /dev/md1 /mnt/boot
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
mount -t proc none /mnt/proc
chroot /mnt /bin/bash
But based on your suggestion it's working better
mdadm -A /dev/md1 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1
mdadm -A /dev/md2 /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2
mount /dev/md2 /mnt
mount /dev/md1 /mnt/boot
mount -t proc none /mnt/proc
mount -t sysfs none /mnt/sys
mount -n -t ramfs none /mnt/dev
cp -Rp /dev/* /mnt/dev
chroot /mnt /bin/bash
The boot is now getting further, but now I'm getting:
md: md2 stopped.
md: bind<sdb2>
md: bind<sda2>
raid1: raid set md2 active with 2 out of 2 mirrors
md2: detected capacity change from 0 to 32218349568
mdadm: /dev/md2 has been started with 2 drives.
md2: Waiting 10 seconds for device /dev/md2 ...
unknown partition table
mount: mounting /dev/md2 on /new_root failed: No such device
ERROR: Failed to mount the real root device.
Bailing out, you are on your own. Good luck.
/bin/sh: can't access tty; job contol turned off
[ramfs /]#
The bit that really confuses me is this:
[ramfs /]# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1]
md2 : active raid1 sda2[0] sdb2[1]
31463232 blocks [2/2] [UU]
md1 : active raid1 sda1[0] sdb1[1]
208704 blocks [2/2] [UU]
unused devices: <none>
[ramfs /]# mount /dev/md2 /new_root
mount: mounting /dev/md2 on /new_root failed: No such file or directory
[ramfs /]# ls /dev/md2
/dev/md2
[ramfs /]#
So the array is up, the device node is there but it can't be mounted? Very strange.
Last edited by chas (2010-05-02 11:24:09)

Installing grub2 1.99rc1 on Linux Software RAID (/dev/md[0-x])

Hello!
In the last days I tried to install Archlinux x64 on my server. This server consists of 4 SATA drives. I'm using Linux software Raid with the following configuration:
mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --auto=yes --level=10 --raid-devices=4 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1
mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md1 --auto=yes --level=10 --raid-devices=4 /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2 /dev/sdc2 /dev/sdd2
mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md2 --auto=yes --level=0 --raid-devices=4 /dev/sda3 /dev/sdb3 /dev/sdc3 /dev/sdd3
md0 --> / including /boot
md1 --> /data (my storage partiton)
md2 --> my swap partion
In the last step of the installer I don't installed grub and leave the installer without installing a bootloader.
I mounted the /dev folder to /mnt/dev and chrooted in my new system:
chroot /mnt bash
In my new system I installed the new grub2 bootloader with:
pacman -S grub2-bios
In the next step I tried to install the bootloader to the MBR with the following command:
grub_bios-install --boot-directory=/boot --no-floppy --recheck /dev/md0
But I get the following error:
/sbin/grub-probe: error: no such disk.
Auto-detection of a filesystem of /dev/md0 failed.
Please report this together with the output of "/sbin/grub-probe --device-map="/boot/grub/device.map" --target=fs -v /boot/grub" to <[email protected]>
I also tried to install the grub2 directly on my discs with the following command:
grub_bios-install --boot-directory=/boot --no-floppy --recheck /dev/sda
But the error is the same as above.
Following the instruction of the error message I executed the following command:
/sbin/grub-probe --device-map="/boot/grub/device.map
I get a large debug output:
/sbin/grub-probe: info: scanning hd3,msdos2 for LVM.
/sbin/grub-probe: info: the size of hd3 is 3907029168.
/sbin/grub-probe: info: no LVM signature found
/sbin/grub-probe: info: scanning hd3,msdos1 for LVM.
/sbin/grub-probe: info: the size of hd3 is 3907029168.
/sbin/grub-probe: info: no LVM signature found
/sbin/grub-probe: info: scanning hd4 for LVM.
/sbin/grub-probe: info: the size of hd4 is 2068992.
/sbin/grub-probe: info: no LVM signature found
/sbin/grub-probe: info: the size of hd4 is 2068992.
/sbin/grub-probe: info: scanning hd4,msdos1 for LVM.
/sbin/grub-probe: info: the size of hd4 is 2068992.
/sbin/grub-probe: info: no LVM signature found
/sbin/grub-probe: info: changing current directory to /dev.
/sbin/grub-probe: info: opening md0.
/sbin/grub-probe: error: no such disk.
There is a tutorial for installing grub2 at ArchLinux in the wiki:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Grub2
But I can't find any solution for my problem.
Does anybody know a solution for this problem?
Thanks for help
Best regards,
Flasher
Last edited by Flasher (2011-03-03 20:13:13)

hbswn wrote:Maybe it cannot handle the new mdadm format. Here the other partitions have version 0.90. Only the failing md0 has version 1.2:
I'm sure it is the cause of the problem. But not new format. The old one (0.90) is incompatible with grub2.
I hit the same problem and today I managed to fix it.
What I did: I copied /boot to tmp directory, destroyed /dev/md0 (my /boot) with metadata 0.90, created new /dev/md0 (metadata 1.2), copied back /boot content.
After that, grub_bios-install /dev/sda && grub_bios-install /dev/sdb finished without any errors.

Software RAID Failure - my experience and solution

I just wanted to share this information with the iCloud community.
I searched a bit and did not find much information that was useful with regard to my software RAID issue.
I have 27 inch Mid 2011 iMac with SSD and Hard drive which has been great.
I added an external hard drive (I think if I mention any brand name the moderator will delete this post) which includes an nice aluminum case with two 3 TB hard drives within it, and it has a big blue light on the front and is connected via Thunderbolt. This unit is about 2 years old and I have it configured in a 3 TB mirrored RAID (RAID 1) via a software RAID configured via Mac OS Disk Utility.
I had at one point a minor glitch which was fixed using another piece of software (again if I mention a brand the moderator will delete this post) which is like a 'Harddrive Fighter' or similar type name LOL.   So otherwise that RAID has served me well as a site for my Time Machine back up and Aperture Vault, etc. (I created a 1.5 TB Sparse bundle for Time Machine so that the backup would not use the entire 3 TBs)
I recently purchased a second aluminum block of drives, and set that up as a 4 TB RAID 1.
Each of the two RAIDs are set with the option of “Automatically rebuild RAID mirror sets” checked.
I put only about 400 gb on the new RAID to let it sit for a ‘burning in period.’
A few days ago the monitoring software from the vendor who sells the aluminum block of drives told me I had a problem. One of the drives had “Failed.”   The monitoring software strangely enough does not distinguish the drives so you can figure out which pair had the issue, so I assumed it was the New 8 TB model. Long story short, it was the older 6 TB model, but that does not matter for this discussion.
I contacted the vender and this is part of their response.
“This is an indication that the Disk Utility application in Mac had a momentary problem communicating with the drive mechanism. As a result, it marked that drive as "failed" in the header information. Unfortunately, once this designation is applied to a drive by the OS, the Disk Utility will thereafter refuse to attempt any further operations with that disk until the incorrect "failed" marker is manually cleared off the drive.”
That did not sound very good to me…..back up killed by a SOFTWARE GLITCH?
“The solution is to remove the corrupted volume header, and allow the generation of a new one….This command will need to be done for each disk in the array… (using Terminal)…
diskutil zerodisk (identifier)
…3. After everything is finished, you should be able to exit Terminal, and go back into the Disk Utility Application to re-configure the RAID array on the device.”
Furthermore they said.
“If the Disk Utility has placed a flag into the RAID array header (which exists on both drives) then performing this procedure on a single drive will not correct anything.”
And…
“When a drive actually does fail, it typically stops appearing in the Disk Utility application altogether. In that circumstance, it will never be marked "failed" by the Disk Utility, so the header erase operation is not needed.”
This all sounded like a bad idea to me. And what does the Vendors RAID monitor software say then? “Disk Really Really FAILED, check for a fire.”
As I tried to figure out which drive was actually the bad RAID pair I stumbled on a solution.
First I noted that the OS Disk Utility did NOT show a fault in the RAID. It listed both RAIDS as “Online.’ Thus no rebuilding was needed and it did not begin the rebuild process.
The Vendors disk monitor software saw some fault, but Mac was still able to read and write to the RAID, both disks in the mirror. I wrote a folder to the RAID and with various rebooting steps I pulled the “Bad” drive and looked at the “Good” Drive….the folder was there…I put the Bad drive back in and pulled the Good Drive and the folder was there on the “bad” drive. So it wrote to both drives. AND THE VENDORS MONITORING SOFTWARE SHOWED THE PREVIOUSLY LABELED ‘BAD’ DRIVE AS ‘GOOD’ AND THE MISSING DRIVE SLOT AS ‘BAD’.
My stumbled FIX.   I moved a bunch of files off the failed RAID to the new RAID but before I moved the sparse bundle, a folder of 500 gigs movies and some other really big folders the DISK UTILITY WINDOW (which I still had open) now showed that the RAID had a Defect and began rebuilding the mirror set itself, out of the blue!   I don't know why this happened. But moving about 1/2 of the data off of it perhaps did something? Any Ideas?
This process took a few hours as best I can tell (let it run overnight) and the next day the RAID was fine and the Vendors RAID monitor did not show a fault any longer.
So, the Vendors RAID monitoring software reporting a “FAILED” drive without any specific error codes to look up. Perhaps they could have more info for the user on the specific fault? The support line of the the Vendor said with certainty “the Volume Header is corrupted” and THE ONLY FIX is to completely ZERO THE DRIVE! This was not necessary as it turns out.
And the stick in the eye to me…..
“I've also sometimes seen the drives get marked as "failed" by the disk utility due to a shaky connection. In some cases, swapping the ends of the Thunderbolt cable will help with this. Something to try, perhaps, if your problems come back. “
Ya Right…..
Mike

Follow up.
After going through the Zeroing process and rebuilding the RAID set three times, with various configurations, LaCie finally agreed to repair the unit under warrantee.
I tried swapping the power supplies and thunderbolt wires, tried taking the drive out of series with the newer big brother of it. And it still failed after a few days.
I just wanted to share more of what I learned with regard to rebuilding the RAID sets via the Terminal. The commands can be typed partially and a help paragraph will come up to give VERY cryptic descriptions of the proper use of the commands.
First Under terminal you can used the command "diskutil appleRAID list" to list those drives which are in the RAID. This gives you the ID number for each physical drive. For example:
AppleRAID sets (1 found)
===============================================================================
Name:                 LaCie RAID 3TB
Unique ID:            84A93ADF-A7CA-4E5A-B8AE-8B4A8A6960CA
Type:                 Mirror
Status:               Online
Size:                 3.0 TB (3000248991744 Bytes)
Rebuild:              manual
Device Node:          disk4
# DevNode   UUID                                  Status     Size
0 disk3s2   D53F6A81-89F1-4FB3-86A9-8808006683C2 Online     3000248991744
- disk2s2   E58CA8F5-1D2C-423A-B4BE-FBAA80F85879 Spare      3000248991744
===============================================================================
In my situation with the failed RAID, I had an extra disk in this with the status of Missing/Failed.
The command is "diskutil appleRAID remove" and the cryptic help paragraph says:
Usage: diskutil appleRAID remove MemberDeviceName|MemberUUID
        RAIDSetVolumePath|RAIDSetDeviceName|RAIDSetUUID
MemberDeviceName|MemberUUID is the number listed in the "diskutil appleRAID List" command, and
RAIDSetVolumePath|RAIDSetDeviceName|RAIDSetUUID is the Device Node for the RAID which here is /dev/disk4.
I used this command to remove the third entry (missing/failed), I did not copy the terminal window text on that one, so I cannot show the list of three disks.
I could not get to remove the disk2s2 disk listed as SPARE, as it gave an error message:
Michaels-iMac:~ mike_aronis$ diskutil appleraid remove E58CA8F5-1D2C-423A-B4BE-FBAA80F85879 /dev/disk4
Started RAID operation on disk4 LaCie RAID 3TB
Removing disk from RAID
Changing the disk type
Can't resize the file system on the disk "disk2s2"
Error: -69827: The partition cannot be resized
But I was able to remove it using the graphical interface Disk Utility program using the delete key.
I then rebuilt the RAID set by dragging the second drive back into the RAID set.
I could not get the command: "diskutil appleRAID update AutoRebuild 1 /dev/disk4" to work, because even though it was trying to execute it HUNG. I put the two drives into my newer LaCie 2big as my attempt at further trouble shooting the RAID (this was not suggested by LaCie tech), rebuild the RAID and now I am going to leave it setup that way for a few days before I ship it back to just see if the old drives work fine in the new RAID box (thus proving the RAID box is the problem). I tried the AutoRebuild 1 command just now and it gave an error.
Michaels-iMac:~ mike_aronis$ diskutil appleraid update autorebuild 1 /dev/disk4
Error updating RAID: Couldn't modify RAID (-69848)
Michaels-iMac:~ mike_aronis$
In my haste to rebuild the RAID set for the third or forth time as LaCie led me through the testing this and test that phase, I forgot to click the "Auto Rebuild" option in the Disk Utility program.
Question for the more experienced:
As I was working on this issue, I notice that each time I rebooted and did work in the Terminal (with and without the RAID plugged in to the thunderbolt connection) I notice that the list of drives would change and my main boot drive would not stay listed as drive 0! Some times it would be drive 0, sometimes the RAID would be listed as Drive 0. It's strange to me...I would have thought the designation for Drive0 and Drive1 would always be my two build in drives (SSD and spinning drive).
Mike

Migrating Software RAID 1 ?!

Hello all, i just installed my new SSD on which i'm doing a fresh install of my OS, although have now run into an issue with regaining the software raid 1 i had setup on 2 external drives with the old OS. Can i possibly migrate this raid 1 to the fresh OS??the drives are not coming up at all at the moment but if i boot the old OS disk they appear as normal.
any help would be great
thanks

Did a bit more research, SCSI and storage use to be my hobby, and Mac Pro my passion. So I tried to dig into this further. SSD is very popular and people want to have 2 x SSDs along with 3-4 traditional mechanical hard drives. I just don't see going with an external type solution.
Short answer: ain't gonna boot.
You want a mirror - that should be fine.
I was not familiar at all with one item, but I advise people to not put USB/FW cases on SATA controllers, too many problems and issues.
*Raidon 4bay 19in 1ru esata enclusure*
Like this?
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Raidon/SR4WBS2/
Is the controller one of the very few that are bootable? most are not.
To be bootable, the card would have to have Mac EFI firmware. Also, the EFI ROM version can "interfere" with support for cards and being bootable.
There are always drivers and firmware when it comes to booting. It is suppose to be "driver-less." translation: built into OS X 10.5.x and later.
NewerTech use Marvell chipset. I can say their 6G chipset which you can google and see who else uses them. I just picked up Marvell based 6G 2-port. So interested in why MINE is having trouble (conflicts with Sonnet Silicon Image most likely). I have a couple Sonnet cards, E4P and E2P, and there are drivers.
the Caldigit Fasta-2E is not bootable with the Mac Pro. In addition, while most FirmTek controllers are bootable with the PowerMac G4 and G5, they are not bootable with the Apple Mac Pro. Bootable External drives Mac Pro?
*NewerTech MAXPower eSATA 6G*
+Does NOT support booting on any Macintosh platform.+
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/MXPCIE6GS2/
Or this one,
*eSATA 6G PCIe 2.0 RAID Capable Controller Card*
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/MXPCIE6GRS/
http://www.newertech.com/products/pcieraidesata.php
Reviewed here (and this should be req'd site to check also for Mac Pro owners)
http://macperformanceguide.com/Reviews-MAXPowereSATA6G.html
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/IDE/NewerTech6GeSATA/Newertech6GeSataCard.html
There is also FirmTek.
http://firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-2me4-e/perform/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Firmtek/SATAE6G/
Highpoint has always depended on driver.
Popular kit to install two SSDs in optical drive bay:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MM352A52MP9/
External dual drive (SATA only, which is what I use and want for native SATA speeds)
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MESATATBEK/?APC=XLR8You rMac09
The ideal would be to boot off the two SSDs, and yes it would help to have a PCIe with internal ports, then use them in stripe RAID, not mirror (you can backup the OS and have a clone on external FW800; on sparse disk image of 100GB; on a small internal drive even), and when it changes.
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/IDE/SSDin_Mac_Pro/SSD_install_inMacPro.htm#storytop
For an internal controller, HPT RR640 IF it was supported at all on Mac
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115077
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/3309/highpointrocketraid_640_sata_6gb_s_4_port_pci_e_2_0controller/index.html
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2011/01/04/high-point-rocketraid-640-review/5
To boot in 64-bit mode, all drivers and even some application plug-ins I believe have to be 64-bit, but not everything is 64-bit mode compatible.
one SSD in optical drive bay for system
no need to mirror
no controller
use the 2nd for scratch or an expensive off line backup
If the SSD fails, swap out, use clone, rebuild and restore.
No meed for mirror, AND disks writes are where SSDs can suffer and slow down.
But DO consider SoftRAID 4.x, great support for SSDs and driver even for non-RAID, but their mirror RAID is a notch above.
http://www.softraid.com
I found Highpoint RR Quad on Apple Store:
Is this compatible with the new 2010 Mac Pros? bootable?
http://store.apple.com/us/product/H1113LL/A#compatibility
I think you would get more mac pro owners to read and help in Mac Pro forum. And don't forget to stop by and check XLR8YOURMAC web site for news and tips about hardware upgrades and reports.

Software raid 1 drive(s) failed

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