Testing a Mirrored RAID

I created a mirrored RAID out of 2 500GB LaCie FW drives. It appears to have been successful and I loaded about 100GB of info onto it. They are connected to a G4 dual 1.25 running 10.4.x.
How can I test it out to be sure that the 2 drives are, indeed, mirroring themselves? Can I somehow inspect the contents of each of the individual drives, apart from the RAID?
I'd had to count on the redundancy and then find out that it was not working correctly.
Typomarx
G5 dual 2.0   Mac OS X (10.3.9)  

I not mirroring my local drive.
I have an external FW drive that I put my jobs/important files on. This IS my back-up.
I work on them on my local drive and then copy them to the FW drive when I've finished.
I'm mirroring THAT drive so that my jobs are all backed up on a redundant drive.
As needed, I recall jobs from that Jobs "server", work on them locally and then recopy them back to the "server." Truly a poor man's server.
If I'm working on a job on my local drive and my Mac craps out and takes the file with it -- it should not affect my jobs and back-ups at all.
Or so I'm hoping.
Then if one of the RAID disks craps out, I haven't lost everything. I have the other one which contains a complete record.
I can than fix/replace the faulty disk and be on my merry way.
Does this sound reasonable?
Typomarx

Similar Messages

  • Second drive in mirrored raid empty????

    I have a xserve with two identical drive. They were configured to mirror one another. Some how that is not the case any longer. When I look in disk utility the raid configuration is simply not there and the second drive is empty.
    I did not do the initial setup of the raid. I would like to reestablish the mirrored configuration but am scared about my existing data on the main drive.
    Can i safely setup the raid mirror configuration without risking the data on drive 1?
    Can someone walk me through the steps?
    Thank you,
    Jeremy

    The RAID configuration is not there and the second drive has no data whatsoever.
    In passing, the longest I ever had any kind of RAID last was 6 months before everything was lost or messed up royally.
    1. I would.
    2. Backup first to another drive...
    I strongly recommend that you get a good Firewire drive to Clone your Internal drive to ASAP!
    http://eshop.macsales.com/search/firewire+drives
    Many of those come with Backup SW, or...
    Get carbon copy cloner to make an exact copy of your old HD to the New one...
    http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
    SuperDuper...
    http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/
    Or the most expensive one & my favorite, Tri-Backup...
    http://www.tri-edre.com/english/tribackup.html
    Creating the RAID will not format both drives... right?
    I haven't tested a Mirror RAID on that, but RAID 0 will wipe the Directories out iirc.

  • Mirrored RAID Failed

    I have an xserve with three drives. Bay one is a regular single boot volume but bays 2 & 3 are a mirrored RAID pair. I got a flashing yellow light yesterday and ran Disk Utility. It showed the RAID pair as having an error. I ran First Aid and it now reports that the volume is OK but when I look at the RAID panel only one physical disk is listed. The volume still functions ok, the server is working fine and the yellow light is not flashing now - but I guess this means that I do not have a mirrored RAID pair anymore.
    How should I go about returning my RAID to a mirrored pair? How can I identify which of the two physical disks has failed? (I don't want to pull out the wrong one!) Can I slot in a new disk and have it added into the RAID as a replacement?

    Do you have a backup of that RAID?
    If yes I would rebuild the RAID. From what you are saying I would not trust it any more. When you do that then you can test each disk by formating it and then trying to copy data to the drive. You can then see if one is not working right or if they both are fine.

  • Unable to rebuild in mirrored RAID after hard drive failure

    I plan on getting a mirrored raid setup for my backups of all my work that I have done. I am currently testing out how the built in software RAID works in OSX.
    I have setup a mirrored RAID with two flash drives and it works fine, i then tried to simulate if one of the disks were to fail by reformatting it, and then i tried to plug it back in to rebuild it, but it does not allow me to do so the rebuild button is greyed out. Could it be because i had the RAID setup as automatically rebuild? If someone could walk me through the process of rebuilding the raid setup that would be great, i would like to figure this out before purchasing the harddrives.

    Awesome, this just saved my sanity, thank you!
    I was about to go totally insane when I couldn't find the option to add a new drive to the existing RAID mirror and then rebuild the whole thing.
    In the Apple help, it just says "go to RAID" "click rebuild" - but this is absolutely not how it works!
    Adding the new, empty drive by drag and drop wasn't mentioned anywhere - in addition to that I have never seen a program that has certain functions which can only be accessed by drag and drop.
    Also the hard disk utility doesn't look like drag and drop GUI at all.
    It was really easy as soon as I read this thread, so thanks again, this totally saved my day!

  • Win7 Pro not seeing Mirrored Raid

    I have 4 hard drives in my MacPro.
    disk 1 OS X 10.6 (500GB)
    disk 2 Win 7 x64 (300GB) set up through bootcamp
    disk 3 1TB storage
    disk 4 1TB storage
    Using Mac's disk utility, I made the two 1TB disks a mirrored RAID. I then checked to see if I could access the new RAID set under Win7. Win7 does not see them accept under Disk Management where they show up as hardware, but they have no drive letter. In short, I can't see them as usable drives or the mirrored RAID I set them up to be on the Mac side.
    As a test, I went back to the MAC side, deleted the RAID set which then unlinked the drives making them show up on the MAC desktop as two separate drives instead of one. Rebooting to the Win7 HD, I noticed that now windows sees the two drives as usable storage.
    Now, this is not what I want. I want a mirrored RAID usable by both the MAC and Win7.
    *How do I get Win7 to see the mirrored Raid?*

    Hi Arminya,
    most likely you are out of luck.
    Windwos 7 can not see/use harddisks that use Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as file system.
    And the only solution furll read/writte access from Windows is MacDrive and they don't support software RAID through Disk Utility http://assist.mediafour.com/index.php?a=knowledgebase&_j=questiondetails&_i=123&nav=%26gt%3B+%3Cahref%3D%27index.php%3F_a%3Dknowledgebase%26_j%3Dsubcat%26i%3D1%27%3EMacDrive%3C%2Fa%3E
    Sorry
    Stefan

  • Deleting 2 Mirrored RAID of OS X

    I have 2 SSD on my Mac Pro with OS X 10.8.5
    I made Mirrored RAID on them with OS X installed on them
    I want to delete RAID from one of them and use it as data without losing OS X or the data stored on Desktop or anything
    SO if i delete RAID will i lose data ?
    I didnt do anything yet i need help

    First off, you should run the Safari 4 beta uninstaller that came with Safari 4.
    Secondly, if Safari 3.2.1 doesn't work, it probably is because some network application you previously installed hasn't been tested with it. Did you install any cell phone or PDA syncing software recently? The Hotsync typically is a plugin for cell phone or PDA syncing software.

  • 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.

  • How do I add a new drive to a degraded MIRRORED  RAID set?

    My mirrored raid said it was degraded because one of the drives had a failure.
    Today I unplugged the faulty drive and inserted a new one.
    So far so good.
    I erased the new drive.
    Then I went into disk utility and followed the instructions in the help about RAID but I cannot see how to add this new drive to the RAID.
    I'm confused.
    1) The data is all on the RAID (the good, original slice) so can I add a new slice?
    2) how do I do it?
    Many thanks

    I don't recommend the Apple hardware RAID card, and it doesn't work with off the shelf drives. If you are using drives in RAID, first make sure they are RAID Edition or lacking that Enterprise. Same make/model/firmware.
    If using Seagate, avoid anything prior to 7200.12 series. If WD the RE2/3 series.
    Rebuilds are slow, and one reason why I recommend 3 drives, even if you lose one you are covered still.
    Of course just having two backups per volume is more important and comes first; mirrors are great for live editing and recording (audio) but otherwise... I'd stick to stripe and redundant backups. Only if you need 24/7. Otherwise, forget mirror.

  • Recovering data from a damaged mirrored RAID

    I have a puzzle I'm hoping you can help me with: I have a mirrored RAID array in a MD G4 which is not mounting (since going to Apple for replacing the logic board).
    I have tried connecting both drives to a Forensic FireWire dock to no avail; they show up as "spare" and not as a "slice".
    Any suggestions?
    Yours truly,
    -Tom
    FYI - Below are the results of "diskutil checkRAID" and "diskutil list" on this G4:
    #diskutil checkRAID
    RAID SETS
    Name: Stuff
    Unique ID: 58607662-4550-11D8-84ED-000393D28706
    Type: Mirror
    Status: Offline
    Device Node: disk4
    Apple RAID Version: 1
    # Device Node UUID Status
    1 disk1s4 AF8C5D0C-24F3-4EA3-A123-5F5E22FA6D65 Spare
    0 disk2s3 027E86C9-88CE-4973-9984-C7A010C422FF Spare
    2 Unknown Missing/Damaged
    2 Unknown Missing/Damaged
    #diskutil list
    /dev/disk0
    #: type name size identifier
    0: Applepartitionscheme *114.5 GB disk0
    1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 KB disk0s1
    2: Apple_HFS Backup 114.5 GB disk0s2
    /dev/disk1
    #: type name size identifier
    0: Applepartitionscheme *149.1 GB disk1
    1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 KB disk1s1
    2: Apple_Boot 128.0 MB disk1s3
    3: Apple_RAID 148.9 GB disk1s4
    /dev/disk2
    #: type name size identifier
    0: Applepartitionscheme *149.1 GB disk2
    1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 KB disk2s1
    2: AppleDriverOpenFirmware 512.0 KB disk2s2
    3: AppleBootRAID 149.1 GB disk2s3
    /dev/disk3
    #: type name size identifier
    0: Applepartitionscheme *74.5 GB disk3
    1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 KB disk3s1
    2: Apple_Driver43 28.0 KB disk3s2
    3: Apple_Driver43 28.0 KB disk3s3
    4: AppleDriverATA 28.0 KB disk3s4
    5: AppleDriverATA 28.0 KB disk3s5
    6: Apple_FWDriver 256.0 KB disk3s6
    7: AppleDriverIOKit 256.0 KB disk3s7
    8: Apple_Patches 256.0 KB disk3s8
    9: Apple_HFS Laura 74.5 GB disk3s9
    /dev/disk4
    #: type name size identifier
    0: *0.0 B disk4

    Razorlance wrote:
    Is it possible to just put the old SSD in the new laptop then?
    Maybe, I just cannot say with authority.  Even if they were physically the same, the question is what OSX is on the older SSD.  If it is older than the one the new MBP came with, it will not work.
    Ciao.

  • 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.

  • Disk Utility gives error and does not rebuild mirrored RAID

    After having a HDD fail on a mirrored RAID I replaced the HDD and attempted to rebuild. Disk Utility reports via Console that it can not find an Apple Boot partition to check size and then fails to repair the RAID. Details follow.
    Mac OS X v.10.4.8 Server
    Power Mac G3 (Blue & White)
    512MB RAM
    20GB ATA HDD – boot device on internal ATA bus
    4x 160GB ATA HDDs - setup in RAID scheme on Sonnet ATA/133 PCI card
    RAID configured using Mac OS X v.10.4.8's Disk Utility and is an Apple RAID version 2.
    RAID scheme <from "diskutil checkRAID" cmd>:
    Welcome to Darwin!
    [myserver:~] myadminuser% diskutil checkRAID
    RAID SETS
    Name: Mirror_2
    Unique ID: 5FF8AD5F-0892-482D-B430-C7069D63AFD2
    Type: Mirror
    Status: Online
    Device Node: disk3
    Apple RAID Version: 2
    # Device Node UUID Status
    0 disk0s3 1FB48B00-3E52-4C29-8F05-2ED8BDAE4544 Online
    1 disk6s3 BF2E69C6-698E-4D6A-A2A9-FE8CDAD8A7B1 Online
    Name: Mirror_1
    Unique ID: B448A09D-EC10-41EE-BA45-4D4071A88EA5
    Type: Mirror
    Status: Degraded
    Device Node: disk5
    Apple RAID Version: 2
    # Device Node UUID Status
    1 disk2s3 09AD5705-CF67-48B3-8E31-79983BD4781A Online
    0 disk4s3 23EB1952-8B18-4400-A6FE-22C2F707C097 Failed
    Name: StorageRAID1
    Unique ID: 2B8349AB-F553-4FD2-8440-C575791DA858
    Type: Stripe
    Status: Online
    Device Node: disk7
    Apple RAID Version: 2
    # Device Node UUID Status
    0 disk3 5FF8AD5F-0892-482D-B430-C7069D63AFD2 Online
    1 disk5 B448A09D-EC10-41EE-BA45-4D4071A88EA5 Online
    I configured this RAID scheme (two two drive mirrors striped together) according to this kbase document: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304377
    As shown in the above "diskutil checkRAID" output I have a failed HDD. So I replaced the HDD with another 160GB cold spare. I added the new drive to the mirror "Mirror_1" also known as disk5 and hit rebuild. Received the normal message that all data on the new drive I was adding would be erased.
    I then receive the following error immediately in the Console Log:
    Rebuilding RAID "Mirror_1"
    2006-12-15 23:50:24.741 DiskManagementTool [375] WARNING: Could not find Apple Boot partition to check it's size, skipping disk5s-1s.
    Rebuilding RAID slice "disk4s3"
    Just to stem some confusion, the device ID disk4s3 has been used by the system for both the old failed HDD and the new replacement HDD.
    The result of this attempted rebuild is I end up with all the data from Mirror_1 on the new HDD but the new HDD is not successfully added to the RAID, therefore Mirror_1 is still degraded and my problem not resolved.
    I ran the appropriate rebuild cmd from both the GUI Disk Utility as described and from the CLI "diskutil repairMirror disk5 disk4s3" but no joy.
    Any help would be greatly appreciated. This volume houses a large amount of important data including user home directories so while some offline time may be required data loss would not be very acceptable.
    Thanks in advance and I will be happy to provide more information as necessary.

    I guess doing it in Terminal would fail too:
    diskutil repairMirror disk5 disk4

  • Maximum drive size for mirrored RAID

    I'm want to set up a mirrored RAID with two 4TB drives that I have.  When I put the drives in the tower (Mac Pro, OS 10.8.5) and open Disk Utility, the RAID button at the top does not show up for these drives.  I only see First Aid, Erase, and Restore.  Is there a max size for a drive that I'm exceeding?  Or is it something else?

    Hi - from the research I have done, there is a BUG in the OS. A solution is to boot with an older version of OS X and format the drive with the version of disk utlity on the older OS, or yank out the drive and put it in one of those 'drive toaster' type devices and format it EXTERNALLY.  The problem seems to be localized when it's formatted with the drive INSIDE the MacPro.
    You would figure that this would be a high priority fix, but NO.  I went nuts for a few days trying to figure out WHY I could not see the RAID tab.
    There is also third party software that has a more robust RAID solution. I have NOT tried it yet, but you should check it out.
    http://www.softraid.com/
    Alfred
    PS: If you've resolved this problem, do share your findings here too!

  • Mirrored RAID:  MediaKit reports block size error

    I am trying to create a 2nd set up backup drives for my photos.  I have two new iomega 2TB drives, which look essentially identical to drives I'm currently using as my primary backups as a mirrored RAID set.
    I can start the process with freshly erased and reformatted drives (with the default mac format, extended, journaled, unencrypted, not case-sensitive).  And after a minute or three, I see
    "MediaKit reports block size error, usually caused by not being a multiple of 512."
    The RAID options are Mirrored RAID, Mac extended journaled, and options settings are default.
    I see several series of posts with complaints about encrypting RAIDs and disk block sizes, but not unencrypted errors.   I actually started out trying to do this with the 2006 MBP running 10.6.8 and got a different error:  "POSIX reports:  the operation couldn't be completed. Operation not permitted."  I wasn't sure whether the 2TB RAID I already have was set up iwth the older or newer computer--it was definitely before I put Lion on this one--so I tried this one and now have a different error.
    Any idea what the problem might be? 

    Update:  I spent some time on the phone with an Apple support RAID expert, and couldn't figure out what the error was; we couldn't bypass it by playing with partitions on the drives, or any of another couple of manuevers that I've already forgotten.  He noted that his own searches were showing a lot of mentions of similar problems but only with Iomega drives, and he was finding the same links I found earlier about problems creating encrypted drives.  Now trying to decide if it's worth throwing more good money after bad for a call with Iomega support, and waiting to see if the iomega forum is at all helpful.

  • Mirrored RAID taking too long for Data Rebuild

    I have created a RAID 1 (Mirrored RAID) using Disk Utility in my Mac Pro. I have used 2 x 4TB WD Enterprise Grade HDDs. I copied 10 gb data on to this 4 TB RAID volume. Then removed one of the HDDs & installed in my other Mac Pro. It mounted as normal HDD & showed all the data that I had copied. To check if Disk Utility will rebuild the data, I deleted some part of this data (2 GBs out of 10 GBs) & installed this drive back in the system on which I had Created this RAID volume.
    Initially I was surprised to find that Deleted data is now absent on this RAID volume. But on Launching Disk Utility it started rebuilding data on RAID volume.
    BUT for Rebuilding 2 GB data estimated time shown by system was 9 hrs.
    Is this NORMAL?
    I intend to fill this 4 TB RAID volume with approximately 3.5 TB Data. In case one of the drive fails, how long should it take for Disk Utility to rebuild this amount of Data?
    Is there any alternative way of speeding up this process?
    Will Apple's RAID card help?
    All your suggestions will be appreciated.
    Thanks

    I know this is an old thread but I'd be interested in what you came up with for a solution.
    Here's my RAID journey thus far.
    https://discussions.apple.com/message/25119317#25119317
    Again, a gig of info and its taking 1 day 10 hours.
    I hope theres a solution somewhere.
    Drew

  • Mirrored Raid on Startup Drive?

    Can I set up a Mirrored RAID with my Startup Drive without loosing the data?
    I have a G5 Dual 1.8 running the latest OSX. I want to add a second internal HD, then setup a Mirrored RAID from my Startup Disk to my newly installed second internal drive. How do I set up this RAID without loosing anything on my startup drive? The new Drive will be the same size as my startup drive. I want the second drive as a backup startup drive.
    Kevin Hawkins

    Hi Kevin Hawkens;
    What do you expact to gain by having a mirrored RAID?
    Allan

Maybe you are looking for