Updating a Hardware RAID array

I'm running a recent Mac Pro model with Hardware RAID and four 1TB SATA drives.
Seagate 1.5TB drives are now available, and they're cheaper than the 1TB drives were just a few months ago.
My Infrant/Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ implements a proprietary form of RAID that they called X-RAID, similar to RAID-5 but with the feature that you can swap larger drives into the array one at a time, and when you're done, the RAID will be re-synced to make use of the additional storage without requiring that you dump and restore the contents of the array. The final re-sync is an admittedly long process (it took three days for mine to update from 4x750GB to 4x1TB) but it's still a very convenient feature.
Does Hardware RAID on Mac OS X have anything like this, i.e. can I replace 1TB drives one at a time with 1.5TB drives and preserve my data? And when I'm done, will the system recognize and use the new storage?
If not, could someone please describe the procedure that I would need to go through in order to achieve this? I presume that I would need to recreate the RAID array entirely, re-install the OS, and then restore the system from my Time Machine backup. But I'm not sure of the details.
I'd appreciate any help with this. Thanks.
An aside: I was more than a little upset a few months ago when I called Apple Support for help with initial setup of my RAID array (I have Apple Care) and was told "Sorry, we don't support Hardware RAID." So Apple was quite happy to sell me an $800 piece of hardware for my lavish new system but didn't bother to tell me at time of purchase that my configuration was "unsupported." It seems a little outrageous to me.
Given Apple's refusal to help me I need to ask the community for help with problems like this.

Hi rrgomes;
Never having heard of X-RAID but going by your comment that is similar to RAID5 I would have to say that you will not be able to upgrade by replacing one disk at a time.
As to no support for the RAID card, I personally would not have taken his word for that. Instead I would have escalated it up through Customer Service just to be sure before I gave up on that point. To me the response you got there sounds bogus.
Allan

Similar Messages

Booting from external SATA firewire800 hardware RAID array

Just a quick post to update on a new toy and how it's being used.
Recently obtained a hardware RAID array which contains 5 drives at 250 GB each. Currenly setup as RAID 5, providing 1TB of storage.
After formating via DISk image I did a drive restore from my normal boot disk to the new array.
I changed the startup options to boot from the array.
So basically I am running my system from this new device.....I may later reconfig the array to 0+1 with a floating spare.
Cost of the box was 500. New and unused off ebay.

..

Sudden read-only on RAID array.

I don't know if this was caused by an update but suddently my /raid is mounted read-only. It doesn't happen right after the mount but suddently after 1 day of uptime or a few hours and the /raid partition is locked again.
[dezza@dezza ~]$ cd /raid/
[dezza@dezza raid]$ touch me
touch: cannot touch `me': Read-only file system
[dezza@dezza raid]$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 34G 13G 22G 38% /
none 1013M 0 1013M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda3 46M 12M 32M 27% /boot
/dev/md0 466G 364G 103G 79% /raid
[dezza@dezza raid]$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
# <file system> <dir> <type> <options
> <dump> <pass>
none /dev/pts devpts defaults
0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults
0 0
# Optical drive, CD/DVD
/dev/sr0 /media iso9660,udf ro,user,
noauto,unhide 0 0
# Root, swap, boot
/dev/disk/by-label/root / reiserfs defaults
0 1
/dev/disk/by-label/swap swap swap defaults
0 0
/dev/disk/by-label/boot /boot ext2 defaults
0 1
# RAiD BACKUP (2x 500GB Western Digital 7200RPM)
/dev/md0 /raid reiserfs defaults
,sync,user 0 0
# External 1TB
/dev/disk/by-label/external /mnt/1tb ntfs-3g u
ser,sync,exec,uid=1000,gid=1000,locale=en_DK.utf8,force,noauto 0 0
# VirtualBox
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs auto,busgid=108,busmode=0775,devgid=108,devmode=0664,lo
cale=en_DK.utf8 0 0
[dezza@dezza raid]$
Last edited by dezza (2009-08-24 14:42:13)

I had the same problem with a hardware RAID array... I was installing Arch in an previously Redhat server.
The error I got just just before the read-only thing was related to the filesystem... (Arch was in reiserfs and /home in Redhat is ext3)
That read-only thing only happened when I was performing heavy load on the raid by rsyncing almost 300GB from RH to the new arch (No error while installing and configure a very complete system).
I though maybe it was that reiserfs wasn't good enough and I tried with no luck using jfs (the same I succesfully use in LVM in my laptop).
At the end I decided to get rid of the filesystem difference and It worked using ext3.
It worked perfectly for almost a month until last week that we had a crash copying 180GB from an USB external drive. We tried again and it worked with no problems. So in conclusion:
I used ext3 successfully but I have one crashed (after the read-only thing the system becomes useless) documented.
I know this is not an answer but I hope this help you or maybe help someone to give us a point.
P.S: The raid arrays are in the same computer (PERC6 I think) using the aacraid driver. One is raid 5 (RH) and the other one is RAID 0 (Arch),

Best protocol for dual booting on a hardware RAID 0 array?

Hi folks. I would like to dual boot Windows 7 and Arch. I'll append the specs. I have a Terrabyte to split evenly between the two drives - each is 500G. Unless someone can come up with a reason and convince me otherwise, I want to do away with the RAID array. There's no redundancy anyhow and the speed I would lose breaking the array is negligible, therefore irrelevant.
My issue is that I have a RAID 0 hardware array with Intel Rapid Storage Technology as the controller. The computer did NOT come with a Windows disk, but rather a recovery partition. It is my understanding that if I break the array, I will lose the recovery partition and will not be able to reinstall Windows - which I need. IF....the recovery partition can be unphased by breaking the array and I can use it to reinstall Windows, I would prefer that since I may need to recover Windows in the future. It's not a deal breaker if I can't keep the recovery partition, since I have the Windows key.
Is this the ideal protocol?:
1. Backup - I plan on using Alienware Respawn or Clonezilla to backup to a CD and will also backup to an external drive.
2. Break array, but do not alter BIOS to AHCI - leave as RAID.
3. Restore Windows on one drive.
4. Install Arch on second drive.
5. Configure GRUB.
6. Smoke stogie or alternatively weep because I turned my computer into a brick.
At which stage does the partitioning come in? Before or after breaking the array? Is there a better method, than the one I listed. I have spent days scouring Google and the forums and while it's easy to find info on breaking a hardware RAID, there isn't much on doing this with the recovery partition and Alienware Respawn aspects involved. Any help would be appreciated. Please don't kill me or shred my diameter.
==================================================================================
Specs:
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU Q 740 @ 1.73GHz 1.73 Ghz: 8 Intel(R) Core (TM) i7 CPU q740 @ 1.73GHz
Installed Memory: 8.00 GB RAM
64 Bit Operating System
Alienware M17X10
Windows 7 Home Premium
Performance Options: DEP turned on. Virtual Memory: 8180 MB
Architecture: AMD64 Intel64 Family 6 Model 30 Stepping 5, GenuineIntel
Computer: ACPI x64-based PC
Display Adapters: 2 ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5800 Series
DVD/CD-ROOM: HL-DT-ST DVDRWBD CA10N
IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers: Ricoh PCIe Memory Stick Host Controller, Ricoh PCIe SD/MMC Host Controller, and Ricoh PCIe xD-Picture Card Controller
IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers: Ricoh 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller
Imaging devices: Integrated Webcam
Mice; 3 HID-Compliant Mouse and Synaptics PS/2 Port Toch Pad
Monitor: Generic PnP Monitor
Sound, video and game controllers: AMD High Definition Audio Device and High Definition Audio Device
Storage Controllers: Intel(R) Mobile Express Chipset SATA RAID Controller

I think the big thing will be backing up. I don't know anything about the two programs you would use, but I know that if I dd copy the disks, I would have to change the size of the partitions to match the size of the new partitions. IE: I have Arch installed on a RAID0 of 32GB each, and if I wanted to break my RAID and install on just one disk, I would have to shrink the size of my dd'ed copy to match the smaller drive.
Otherwise, it looks like you have the right idea, or at least the right direction.

Raid array being seen as 2 individual drives

Hi. Here is the issue as posted in other places. Still searching for the answer to this one.
Specs:
K7n2 delta2 platinum with b50 bios
2x1gb crucial pc3200 2.5cas ram
AMD Barton 2500
2 x 160gb 7200rpm 8mb cache SATA Samsung Hdd's
Thermaltake 430w psu
Gainward fx5700 ultra graphics
OS's: original xp corp, slipstreamed xp corp sp2
raid drivers: nvraid.sys v4.27, 5.10, 5.11 (also the needed nvatabus.sys with those)
I am NOT overclocked.
fsb 166
1:1 ram/cpu
no spread spectrum or other garbage
ddr400 patch disabled
PSU gives presumably stable reading (according to what I see), with amperage ratings above the required.
checked and rechecked cables for bad ones
ran mulitple scans on drives, all come up drives OK
I HAVE installed into Raid 0 already, this is not an issue of hardware failure as far as I am concerned.
So here is the scenario
I have properly set up the array, using correct bios settings and the raid setup utility, for a raid 0 array of those 2 hdd's listed. When booting into xp, either version, I have used all 3 of the driver sets listed. I have been reinstalling to do some performance tests on different configurations.
Anyway, for the last few nights I have been trying to get the windows setup to see the raid 0 array as one 300gb drive. It does not, no matter what I try. It sees them as 2 drives, each being 160gb (or thereabouts). These drives are matched, same firmware, same lot, so that should not be an issue.
I have used numberous tools to delete the mbr on the drives, both in an array and as single drives. I have done the same as well as tried an install and formatted each drive individually, still the same effect when the raid array is recreated.
Basically, I can find no good reason why the array is seen as individuals and not as an array. It is interesting to note, that even though xp setup sees the the array as 2 drives, I can complete the text based portion of setup. However, rebooting to start the GUI portion of setup, it will not boot. Obviously becuase the bios has the controller as the nvraid controller and it is supposed to be a raid 0 array, so I expected that.
Short of rewriting the mbr, either by deleting it or by changing each drive by formatting/partitioning/installing an OS on them, I cannot think of how to fix this. I know the drives and xp cd's work because I have already installed with them.
I understand what to do in the bios portion, and in the raid setup utility portion. I know that I can boot into windows as a single drive and use the nvraid tool to set it up, but that is not the way it should be, and that is not the way I am going to learn WHY this is happening.
Roger that. First set in bios enable raid (in this bios I have to enable IDE array, then choose which controller to actually enable raid on, which happens to have been SATA 1 & 2).
Second, upon reboot, I use the F10 key to enter raid utility. Then, set to striping, set stripe size (which was one of the things I am testing), and add the drives to the array. Next step is to create it. It asks to clear disc data, and it is done.
Have deleted that array as well as just cleared it. Have deleted it and reboot and rebuild it. Have deleted it, reboot, change bios back to non-raid, reboot. Reboot. Change bios back to raid enabled. Reboot. Rebuild array in raid utility, reboot. Run setup, only see 2 hdd's, not one array.
Umm, yep, that is about it.
More to the story now.
From some other posts I tried this.
1. destroy array. reboot. disable raid in bios. reboot. verify sata's visible as singles in bios.
2. power down. pull plugs on sata's. reboot. no drives visible.
3. pull power. jumper clear cmos. wait 60 seconds. re-pin jumper. power up.
4. verify no drives. verify default bios settings. all is good
5. plug drives in. reboot. seen as singles. erase mbr on both drives. reboot
6. enable raid in bios, and choose sata 1 & 2 as "enabled". reboot.
7. use F10 key to setup raid. Here is the interesting part. Even though I deleted the array prior to all of this, and removed the drives to force an ESCD update, and cleard the cmos with the board jumper, and then before raid was enabled, cleared the mbr on the drives, when I started the raid utility, the array was already set up. That is the problem, whatever that is. I have read snippets where it is claimed that this chip or bios or whatever stores some kind of a table on this stuff, but this is a bit out of hand.
That combination, IMO, should have cleared anything out. But, the saga continues.
Thanks for you help BWM
[Edit] BTW, I have finally found a utility that will see a raid array and allow me to clear the arrays mbr. It is called SuperFdisk and is at ptdd.com. So far the only one that see's the 2 drives as 1.
Yeppers.
Started with v5.10 which came on a floppy with the mobo. Told setup to use both, nvatabus.sys and nvraid.sys. Even switched which one of the 2 I picked first, just to see.
Same thing with v4.27 and v5.11. Also tried it with just the nvraid.sys and just the nvatabus.sys (which obviously does squat for raid, lol)
Trying some new things now. Post in a little bit.
I am officially at 'Wit's End'.
Here is what I have tried now.
1.pull drive cables. pull power. jumper clear cmos. wait. power up. no drives
2.plug sata 1 in. boot. drive detected.
3.boot to command.com, run MHDD, which is a nice russian utility similar to Spinrite. Used this to clear the mbr at hardware level, and do a complete erase.
4. reboot to command.com. run superfdisk. erase mbr.
5. pull plug on sata 1, and plug in sata 2 with sata 1 cable. repeat the erasure steps listed above.
6. pull plug on sata 2, no sata plugged in. reboot
7. change bios to raid enable on sata 1 & 2. power down
8. plug in sata 1 & 2. power up.
9. inspect raid utility. no listing of any arrays. reboot
10. in raid utility, build array. did NOT clear discs. reboot
11. attempt install. single drives found again (used both drivers).reboot
12. in raid utility, optioned to CLEAR discs (funny, rebuild option is never valid).reboot
13. attempt install, both drivers, still seen as 2 individuals.
Things to note. When creating an array when presumably there are none, it assigns the raid array an ID of 2. Upon reboot, the ID is now 1. Don't know what difference that makes.
Also, tried the install listed above with APIC functionality both off and on. Also, when on, set MPS to both 1.1 and 1.4. In addition to this, each variant I tried manual HAL layers of, in this order, ACPI (the one that actually spells ACPI out), ACPI Uniprocessor, MPS Uniprocessor, and let it choose it for me.
So, here I sit in a barca-lounger at 'Wit's End', with a warm cup of java and a dinner mint.

Here is the final product on the floppy disk that I used to successfully install a stable raid 0 on the MSI K7N2 Delta 2 Ultra 400 Platinum ms-6570e motherboard.
On root of floppy, from driverset 6.70. (after much testing, I used driver pack 5.10 for my nic and smbus. I used the realtek sound drivers off the cd for audio. I have used every driver pack I could find, and while some did offer better I/O or read/write latency, this set in general provided the most stable environment. The only drivers I used were these floppy drivers for SATA, the nic and smbus just mentioned, the sound just mentioned, and updating the nvide drivers to mside drivers)
<from sataraid directory>
disk1
idecoi.dll
nvatabus.sys
nvraid.cat
nvraid.inf
nvraid.sys
nvraidco.dll
<from legacy directory>
nvata.cat
nvatabus.inf
I used the txtsetup.oem from the sataraid directory, but edited this:
[Files.scsi.RAIDCLASS]
driver = d1,nvraid.sys,RAIDCLASS
inf = d1,nvraid.inf
dll = d1,nvraidco.dll
catalog = d1,nvraid.cat
[Files.scsi.BUSDRV]
driver = d1,nvatabus.sys,BUSDRV
inf = d1, nvraid.inf
dll = d1,idecoi.dll
catalog = d1, nvraid.cat
To this:
[Files.scsi.RAIDCLASS]
driver = d1,nvraid.sys,RAIDCLASS
inf = d1,nvraid.inf
dll = d1,nvraidco.dll
catalog = d1,nvata.cat
[Files.scsi.BUSDRV]
driver = d1,nvatabus.sys,BUSDRV
inf = d1, nvatabus.inf
dll = d1,idecoi.dll
catalog = d1, nvata.cat
Now, it is important to note that I installed or attempted to install at least 50 times. Bare minimum. I noticed when I use this custom driver disc that in the GUI portion of setup, XP asks me for files from the disc. I tried lot's of different things to alleviate this, and denied some of them.
One thing that really bugged me was that the bios would see my #2 optical, slave on secondary IDE channel. A dvd/rw drive. And I could even start the setup from it. But, once I got about 3/4 through copy file stage on text setup portion, I would hang. Becuase the drive was no longer accessible. Booting from the master would get me to the desktop, but the slave optical was nowhere to be found. Updating the ATA/IDE controller to the ms ide drivers would get it visible, but I kept having issues with stability after I did that.
The most stable method I found was to use my above listing of driver files for the floppy, and when in GUI mode setup asks about NVCOI.DLL, I skipped it, ignored it, and did not let setup install it. That actually got me to the desktop, with access to the slave optical as a "removable drive". It even knew what the hardware was. It just could not access it. On a reboot however, back to not seeing it. This method however did allow me to update the nvide driver with the mside driver with no stability issues. So, for me it was a raving success.
Here are some links regarding the SATA RAID driver workaround:
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:jHbX5bNfGx4J:www.msfn.org/board/lofiversion/index.php/t51140.html+nforce2+nvraid.sys+ms+ide&hl=en&client=opera
http://www.aoaforums.com/frontpage/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=292&Itemid
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:J9UhG2Kd8W4J:www.short-media.com/forum/showthread.php%3Ft%3D32751+xp+2+sata+raid+0+seen+as+individual&hl=en&client=opera
Early on one problem I noticed was that in text setup mode of xp installation, there were long pauses that I have never seen before. I noticed that with both ide and sata installs. Also I noticed that when booting there was a really long pause when the xp logo is first seen in a sort of dim state till when it became bright and vivid.
Come to find out that this is a more or less typical scenario. Most instances that I read about were all pointing to the nvide driver. So, I found if I just updated the PATA controller to the standard ms ide driver, that went away and the whole system ran better.
It took awhile to figure out that if you install a driver with the nForce2 chip, you had to uninstall it or you will have issues. Herein was the main problem I encountered with the SATA RAID installs. The nvatabus.sys driver was required for an SATA RAID install. Omitting the ata driver was impossible. And for awhile I had no success updating the ms ide driver once I was to the desktop without major instability. Here are some links regarding the drivers for this chipset:
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/latest-drivers-for-nforce-3-vt60240.html
In my browsing I came across some pretty interesting articles regarding ACPI. One thing I started playing with was the different HAL layers that xp installs on it's own, vs. me picking one manually (F5 key). I must have started the setup at least 50 times to figure out this: that this particular board does not give me the bios settings to install xp with anything but the ACPI Uniprocessor Hal. For instance, the MPS Uniprocessor HAL is much more responsive, but it lacks the IRQ's needed for setup to see the raid array. I booted to each one, some locking the system up, some booting OK. The one I found the best performance with early on was the one that spells out ACPI, not just initialized. (sorry, I don't want to look it up).
I seemed to be getting closer, but I could not find the needed bios settings to properly manage my ACPI, and since I was trying for RAID, I could not use the one that did work. Here is a link for that kind of stuff.
http://www.fceduc.umu.se/~jesruv98/info/acpi/acpi.html
Another thing that I did not like was being forced to use the dynamic overclocking feature of this board. I have a 333mhz barton core, and I have ddr400 ram. In optimized (fool proof) mode in bios, I was running asynchronous. I did not want that. So I set it down to run at 166mhz, with very slow and conservative settings on everything. Unfortunately, if I did this "manual" method, I was forced to use the dynamic overclocking. I thought I had that figured out. So I set everything to "optimized". But, as it turns out, the system had terrible stability without the dynamic overclocking set to at least Private. What this meant is that I could not rule out that my stability issues (corruptions and hangs and bsod) were from being overclocked even a tiny bit or not. And as if that were not enough, this bios has a special set of settings you must unlock to see. And one of those is paramount in achieving a stable system. It is called the DDR400 patch, and it is enabled by default. So, by pressing SHIFT+f2 AND CTRL+F3, these settings are now available. Like I said, I had to disable that DDR400 patch setting.
I also found out from the first day that my board shipped with the latest bios. I flashed the 2 prior versions with no success in more stability. After about 6 weeks of getting whipped on by this board, I found mention of some modded bios's for this board. I have used modded bios's in the past, some worked wonders, others required some serious effort to recover from. What I found out about this board is that there are 2 players who make the modded bios's. Here is the first index I found from a german website. This one actually is for the older B4 version only for the Platinum.
http://storage-raid-forum.de/viewtopic.php?t=2824
And here is an english forum for pretty much the same thing
http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/bios-mods-for-k7n-and-k8-boards-vt55014.html
These links have a bit more information, and I decided to go with these. I tried versions b61,b62 and b71. I found b71 to work the best for me. Mind you I am not into overclocking or what-have-you. Just a rig that performs as well as it was advertised to do. Try these out for the bios information:
http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=385480
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=84715.0B62
Here is a page that had a bunch of misc stuff I found interesting:
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:QkvLeKcbwjQJ:www.amdzone.com/modules.php%3Fop%3Dmodload%26name%3DPNphpBB2%26file%3Dviewtopic%26p%3D75383+nforce2+ultra+nvraid+driver+freeze&hl=en&client=opera
In the end, I have, I think, conquered this board. My findings can be summed up as follows, all in my opion only I guess.
1. There are some ACPI/APIC issues with this board or this chipset. I believe it also included drivers and some can be attributed to XP.
2. There are some major bios issues with this board.
3. There are some major driver issues concerning SATA/RAID. I am not sure who get's the boob prize, nVidia or MSI.
The only way I have found to get RAID 0 installed and stable is to modify my bios (which is a modded beta version), modify my driver disk for SATA/RAID, modify my install sequence for those drivers, modify my drivers within windows after setup, use different drivers from different driver packs for different pieces of hardware, and modify my HAL layer after everything else is done, to achieve peak performance.
If I had not spent soooo much time trying to get a stable install, I would have built up an Unattended CD, which has some possibilities for forcing non WHQL drivers. But, hey man, I am totally burn out on this board. And all it was for is a spare LAN box for when I go to a lanparty. Sheesh. Murphy's law.
Oh, and I also found out, with my own eyes, that the Soyo KT600 Dragon+ that I dumped for this wonderful board, is way faster. Faster read/writes, faster throughput on the nic, faster booting, much faster installs of xp. As a matter of fact, I could get my KT600 to get a consistent thruput on the network to my older KT266a board at 99%. That is pretty fast. 2 of these Platinum boards, on a sweet switch that is tweaked, will only go up to 91%, no matter how much I tweak them. The gigabit connects via a crossover cable at about 38% of full bore. This is tweaked stuff, but still. I listened to the hype. Dual channel memory, giglan, etc etc.
I hope this may help anyone else out there who is still fighting with these issues.
Out.
sul

RAID arrays

Hi,
I'm very ignorant about RAID, at least in a lot of ways. Please bear with me for the long following quote.
"The benefit that hardware RAID can offer is two-fold: With hardware RAID systems, your Mac is dumping the data off to the RAID system itself without having to mess with actually writing it to the platters. This can make a noticeable difference when doing CPU and I/O intensive chores like DV editing, working with large publishing files, or graphic design work using really large files."
I'd like to try this. Would either of the following products allow me to set this up for my Mac?
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sonnet%20Technology/TSATAIIE4I/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Highpoint%20Technologies/RRAID2310/
And can one boot up from an array for better performance?
Thanks

Let me address your questions:
From the link on the Velociraptor I read this, "Plus, we figured a power user may want dual Velociraptors (RAID 0) to squeeze out even more speed and increase the boot drive total capacity to 600GB. So we included results for "striped" dual drive sets.
Just how did they accomplish that? Or have I asked that already?
Most of the time, a stripped RAID for booting is not helpful in every setup, for every application or person. Have your system on drive A or firewire, and clone it to the RAID after you create it, and the clone is fine.
The "ignore ownership" (to me) is a bug. CCC or SuperDuper should insure ownership is enabled before starting the copy operation. Most attempts that fail, fail because "ownership" box in Volume Get Info was "on."
But... if you haven't been using RAID much in the past, I would forgo for now, and with a couple VRs there are other ways to get the most out of two or three.
Having a "dedicated" boot drive of just the operating system and applications is often enough, and keep all data and media on another drive(s).
I keep the "home account" on 2nd drive or stripped RAID, so I have 3 drives with boot and dual-drive stripped home.
Raptors have been great for replacing SCSI and for scratch arrays.
They did not put their applications on RAID. I've found that it never helped to move any applications off the boot drive. Boot drive should be your fastest drive.
CS3 really needs a dedicated scratch drive so that it doesn't use the boot drive for scratch when working with large files. When you get to 2GB files, you need both a stripped scratch array of 2-4 drives, also dual stripe for boot, and 3rd array for media or saving files. Consider how long you have to wait to save a 2GB file over and over during the day. It adds up.
A dedicated boot drive of any type only needs to be backed up before installing updates or applications or patches. So most of the time, it stays almost the same and weekly backup is more than enough, while data may need to be backed up multiple times a day.
One note: disable Spotlight on scratch editing volumes, it causes problems to CS3 and other programs.
Make a schematic or diagram is what I do, on paper or in my mind, or I sit here with dozens of drives and shuffle files and drives around and move the system and data to where I think I want it and will make sense. Like this week rearranged everything now that I bought 4 new drives and want to run Windows Vista in VMware.

Upgrading QT caused my RAID array to drop frames again!

FCP 5.1.4. Upgraded QT today as per software upgrade. Repaired DPs after. Just as last time, now my RAID array drops frames on PB. Last time, I thought it was a controller card problem, but a student said to just reinstall QT using steps from Michael Eilers' March 18, 2007 post. It worked. I can try this again, but my question is: Do I have to do this everytime I upgrade QT? Am I doing something wrong? This can't be the SOP for upgrading QT, can it? Maybe I should look at LaCie for updates to the RAID? Advise and help to answer this would be greatly appreciated.

REPEAT AFTER ME: WHEN YOU HAVE A STABLE OS AND APPLICATION COMBO, CLONE YOUR STARTUP DRIVE. This is the only way, I repeat, THE ONLY WAY to work if you depend on your system for your livelihood. I clone to a second internal drive and I can be back to work in a matter of minutes if things go south after an update or upgrade. There is no way that Apple can thoroughly test every possible hardware and software combination. And do not expect a third party supplier to have updates immediately ready.

Is It Possible to Clone RAID Array in a Safe and Easy Way?

Why do computer users need to clone RAID array, especially Windows Server users need to do RAID cloning? Generally speaking, they need to clone RAID array regularly in order to upgrade disk or migrate data from small disk to a larger one. A typical
example is that when the partitions on the hardware RAID runs out of space, you may prefer to rebuild the hardware RAID with larger hard disks. Then, you need to backup the data to another place, rebuild the hardware RAID and restore data again.
What a time-consuming task!
Is it possible to clone RAID array in a safe and easy way? The answer is yes and this article will introduce a RAID cloning software.

Hi jiangchunli,
Were you looking to post this question in some other forum? This looks like related to RAID and Disk upgrades.
This forum is meant for
http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/services/recovery-manager/
Please let us know if this is indeed Hyper-V Recovery Manager related so we can help better.
Thanks
Praveen
Praveen/ www.PraveenKumar.in

RAID Arrays and WinXP Home

OK... I tried upgrading to Win XP 64-bit, but found there were games and applications that were screwy there and some items without 64-bit drivers, etc. So, I rolled back to a clean install of XP Home (32-bit).
After much effort, I was told today at a local techie-store that XP Home "doesn't allow for RAID arrays."
True?
I have 2 Hitachi 160GB drives I got last week at the afore-mentioned store for $112 US total! So, I am trying to make it all work, but am having no luck.
Any thoughts?
Scott in Los Angeles

There is a way to make some versions of windows do a software RAID, but the MSI board has a VIA and a Promise hardware array. Don't worry about what the 'techie' said.
Enable Promise controller in BIOS and set it for RAID.
Press Ctrl & F when prompted to set up your RAID array.
Boot to Windows CD
Press F6 when prompted and insert your Promise RAID disk.
Enjoy!

[VIA] K7T266 PRO- RU motherboard: Windows XP on a RAID ARRAY (fasttrak100 LITE)

Hi All!
I have a
MSI K7T266 PRO- RU motherboard, BIOS is the latest, official from MSI website,
Problem short description: Windows XP (sp1 or sp2 english, I tried both)
will not install when I set 2 x 40 Gig = ~80 Gig Stripe Array.
detailed description:
motherboard K7T266 PRO- RU BIOS 1.9 AMI BIOS.
AMD ATHLON XP 1700 + "Palomino" microprocessor, at default speeds.
one piece of 512 PC 3200 RAM, can tell details later.
Power supply: 400 W CODEGEN model : 300X.
HDD-s : one IBM deskstar, fully functional, and a SEAGATE barracuda. seagate SEATOOLS, IBM DFT 32 no errors both.
I set in the FASTTRAK 100 LITE "PDC20276R" (written on the chip) bios a STRIPE array. Powerquest drive magic , or the Windows XP CD handles it fine , as a 80 gig disk.
I downloaded ALL available versions of the FASTTAK 100 LITE driver from the MSI website.
(only tried: MSI driver FASTTRAK 100 lite, the only available driver on the MSI website, and various drivers from www.promise.com) ( http://www.promise.com/support/download/download2_eng.asp?productId=15&category=driver&os=0&go=GO ) (but I guess they WONT support my raid controller on the motherboard)
Windows XP CD , booting, Press F6 for additional RAID /SCSI drivers, I put in the floppy, choose WinXP fasttrak lite driver, windows continues, even formatting the 80 GIG disk, copy files- access the FASTTRAK.SYS driver, EITHER it says: no fixed disk present, press F3 to exit windows setup, or windows setup continues, copies files, reboots, and then STOP ERROR
http://www.martin555.dyndns.org/stop.jpg
please, help me with the following:
how to install XP on a raid array.
is it worth, will it be little bit faster disk load times etc?
is it secure if I trust the HDD-s?
any clue, how to overclock the AMD 1700+ athlon XP palomino to its maximum, but still stability?
AND : I read a lot about some MOD-ded BIOS called " KUNIBERT" , which makes the LITE raid to a FULL RAID and some other extras? where to get it and what to do?
email me if you can martin5 "at" freemail.hu
THANKS !

pardon me, dump? my english is not very perfect.. you mean to trow away, replace to something better, more stable power supply, more powerful?
you must see... first I would like to resolve the "installing XP on a raid array" problem,( how is it possible, is it worth, will it speed up hard disk access and load times... etc... ) and after that maybe I will OC the machine...
it is now , with a 8 cm ventillator and a large aluminium cooler 39 Celsius IDLE and goes to 45 Celsius during EVEREST benchmarking test. (temperatures on 1700+ default setting and OC-'d to 1900+. just experiencing with it. ) (I saw the toms hardware guide movie , smoking processors..)
cheers, Marton.

Does "AirPort Disk" work with RAID arrays?

I currently have a RAID 10 array consisting of four USB hard drives all attached to a USB hub. I use it with three different macs (two leopard, one tiger) and have never had any problems. I know that you can attach multiple USB hard drives to an AirPort Extreme Base Station via a hub, but will it recognize a RAID array and make it available as a single volume over the network?

...but will it recognize a RAID array and make it available as a single volume over the network?
Why did you ask that question if the device has never appeared as multiple drives?
I understand that the AEBS is NOT a Mac.
(a) Some RAID devices are hardware RAID devices. These devices use several hard drives but appear to the outside world as a single hard drive.
(b) Some devices allow you to install several hard drives and then these must be pieced together into a software RAID and then appear as a single hard drive. OS X has the ability to do this.
If this device operates like the description in (a) it should have no problem connected to the AEBS.

Some configurations such as a software or hardware RAID do not support a recovery partition and can't be used with Find My Mac.

I'm getting the following error message when attempting to invoke "Find My Mac"
Some configurations such as a software or hardware RAID do not support a recovery partition and can't be used with Find My Mac.

You have no recovery partition. This is a normal condition if your boot volume is a software RAID, or if you modified the partition table after running Boot Camp Assistant to create a Windows partition. Otherwise, you need to reinstall OS X in order to add a recovery partition.
If you don't have a current backup, you need to back up before you do anything else.
You have several options for reinstalling.
1. If you have access to a local, unencrypted Time Machine backup volume, and if that volume has a backup of a Mac (not necessarily this one) that was running the same major version of OS X and did have a Recovery partition, then you can boot from the Time Machine volume into Recovery by holding down the option key at the startup chime. Encrypted Time Machine volumes are not bootable, nor are network backups.
2. If your Mac shipped with OS X 10.7 or later preinstalled, or if it's one of the computers that can be upgraded to use OS X Internet Recovery, you may be able to netboot from an Apple server by holding down the key combination option-R at the startup chime. Release the keys when you see a spinning globe.
Note: You need an always-on Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection to the Internet to use Recovery. It won’t work with USB or PPPoE modems, or with proxy servers, or with networks that require a certificate for authentication.
3. Use Recovery Disk Assistant (RDA) on another Mac running the same major version of OS X as yours to create a bootable USB device. Boot your Mac from the device by holding down the option key at startup.Warning: All existing data on the USB device will be erased when you use RDA.
Once you've booted into Recovery, the OS X Utilities screen will appear. Follow the prompts to reinstall OS X. You don't need to erase the boot volume, and you won't need your backup unless something goes wrong. If your Mac was upgraded from an older version of OS X, you’ll need the Apple ID and password you used to upgrade, so make a note of those before you begin.
If none of the above choices is open to you, then you'll have to start over from an OS X 10.6.8 installation. There's no need to overwrite your existing boot volume; you can use an external drive. Install 10.6 from the DVD you originally used to upgrade, or that came with the machine. Run Software Update and install all available updates. Log into the App Store with the Apple ID you used to buy 10.7 or later, and download the installer. When you run it, be sure to choose the right drive to install on.

Remote sync between two RAID arrays

We have two Xserve RAID arrays. One is here in our local office, the other at a remote site which hosts a few of our servers as well. Does anyone have any suggestions for keeping the two synced? I would like to not have to deal with tape backups in the office, but the files being stored here are pretty valuable. I've dealt with this on the Windows side with a tool called Tacit. Essentially that was a Windows box that had proprietary software that would continually update remote Tacit boxes. Anything like that on the Mac side? Possibly free? Would Automator be able to sync me up?
Cheers!

I made a 400.rsync script in /etc/periodic/daily:
#!/bin/sh -
# @(#)daily 8.2 (Berkeley) 1/25/94
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin
log=/var/log/rsync.log.`date -u ''+%y-%m-%d''`
date > $log
mountpoint=`mount | grep '/Volumes/EOFILMsan'`
if [ "X$mountpoint" == "X" ]
then
echo "Oh Oh, Filmsan not yet mounted" >> $log
/bin/mkdir -p /Volumes/EOFILMsan >> $log
/sbin/mount -t acfs EOFILMsan /Volumes/EOFILMsan >> $log
fi
echo "START VIDEOsan" >> $log
rsync -av --delete /Volumes/EOVIDEOsan/ /Volumes/EOFILMsan/EOVIDEOsan >> $log
echo "END VIDEOsan" >> $log
date >> $log

RAID arrays and Windows

Not sure where to post this one. You have been very helpful before so I’ll try again.
The machine is the Media Centre in my signature.
Installed two new Maxtor SATA drives, set up as RAID 0, clean install of XP MCE. Boots on the RAID array. Not a single problem. Installed MSI drivers, XFS video card drivers and KCorp PCI network adaptor for wireless link. Download and install all Windows updates. All OK.
On a later start up it spends long time trying to detect RAID array, then RAID error. Automatically reboots and detects a healthy raid array. Tries to open Windows but screen goes almost black but faint Windows loading page with the short activity bar showing no activity. If left it eventually springs to life. Tried starting in safe mode, no problem. Restore to an earlier restore point, no better.
The RAID problem is intermittent. The Windows problem looks as if it stalls for a variable length of time before it gets going.
Don’t know where to go next. Any suggestions?

fafner: I wanted a large disk to hold recorded TV progs, videos, CDs etc and 160GB is the max for this mainboard. I went for 2x160GB Maxtor drives. As I was using two drives I reasoned I might as well use RAID 0 to get a single volume and a faster machine. In particular I read somewhere that RAID 0 halved, or nearly so, the start up time. Who wants to wait a couple of minutes for the TV to fire up?
Fredrik: The XFX video card drivers are in fact nVidia drivers which are the latest.
Doctor Stu: I have subsequently installed XP on both drives individually. On one it worked well, on the other same old problem: either the drive not found in the BIOS after the heading ‘Detect IDE drives’ or the screen fades as Windows starts up. Checked both drives with Maxtor’s Powermax disk checking utility. Provided the drive was connected to the SATA1 socket and the other drive not connected both passed the Full Test. I could not get Powermax to recognise SATA2 even though both were detected correctly in the BIOS. My conclusion is that the problem was a dodgy connection which I hope has been rectified with all the swapping around.
Is there disk testing utility that puts the disc under load similar to Mem86 for memory?
Will I try RAID again? I doubt it even though it did start up in far less time.
My thanks to all.

Quicktime 7.2 and Vista with RAID Arrays

Has anybody been brave enough to install Quicktime 7.2 on their Vista computer which also has a RAID 0 or 1 array? Previous versions of Quicktime have crashed the RAID array necessitating a new computer the first time and a rebuild of the backup RAID driver the second time.
I want to have iTunes and Quicktime on my Vista machine because I have an iPhone and it only syncs with iTunes but I am afraid to try it again. I updated my BIOS and the Intel RAID drivers with a Dell technician a few days ago so I have their "current" drivers but still am not sure this will "fix" the Quicktime crashing Vista RAID array issue.
Any brave souls out there that have tried the latest version with Vista and a RAID array?
PS - I run the latest version of iTunes (7.3.1) and Quicktime (7.2) on my Sony VAIO laptop with Windows XP and it works and I can sync the iPhone there for now.
Dell XPS 410 Windows Vista RAID 1 Array

That sounds good. Those are what i was hopeful about in your case. I haven't seen a report yet of the Intel Matrix issues being fixed by the Dell-tweaked versions of the Matrix updates. However, there have been successes reported with the direct-from-Intel versions of those updates. For example:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=4677972#4677972
(I'm thinking however, that if the PC manufacturer offers its own versions of the updates on its downloads pages for a model, those are the drivers that folks should go for with their models.)
Prior to those updates to the Intel Matrix coming out, the state of the art treatment (using the older models of the Matrix drivers/application) is discussed in this post:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=4453007#4453007
But i'd be inclined to go the way you've been going with the Dell technician first.

Updating a Hardware RAID array

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