Xserve SSD OS drive Raid 5 array - What if SSD OS drive is corrupt or fails

Xserve SSD OS Drive option with Raid 5 array - What if SSD OS drive fails or the OS becomes corrupted? Could you just re install the os and then upload all of your server settings and it would be able to talk to the raid array and be good to go?
Additionally if the os is in the raid 5 and becomes corrupted and you are not able to get the os to boot would the raid 5 data not be able to be accessed? Or could you just reinstall the os on the array and be ok?
This would be the same if the os is inside a software mirror set?
Thanks in advance!!!

Hi
If you're asking can OSX Server be reinstalled without a reformat the answer would be no. This assumes you're using the OSX Server Installer DVD. Assuming no other hardware issues you should be able to access any/all data on any of the Drives using Target Disk Mode and another mac. This will at least allow a transfer of important data to another source. Having said that you should be keeping back-ups anyway.
You can export Server Admin's configuration as a series of property lists. You can export Users, Groups and Computer Lists from WorkGroup Manager. You can archive the whole of the LDAP database - which will contain everything except home folder information - using Server Admin.
I'm not sure if this is still the case but one of Apple's Best Practice tips was to setup and configure the Server exactly as you wanted it first. Once you're happy use any one of probably half a dozen methods to make a Bootable cloned backup. A free built-in method would be to boot from an appropriate Installer Disk and save the Server OS as a .dmg to a connected USB or Firewire disk. Or use something like CarbonCopyCloner to do regular scheduled clones to an externally attached drive.
My 2p.
Tony

Similar Messages

RAID 0 array of SSDs: not a bad idea, but not easy

I thought you all might find this interesting, and in any case, I'd enjoy hearing feedback as you might also audit these conclusions based on your own expertise with PC systems.
I'm pushing technology to the furthest limits at all times, because I'm grinding through highly compressed 28 Mbps AVCHD 1080p footage while applying numerous layers of GPU-accelerated effects, onto multiple tracks and camera angles inside the Adobe Premiere Pro CS6 workflow. We all know that one of the critical ingredients to surviving in that context is disk access speed (complementing CPU power, which for me is an Ivy Bridge 3770K overclocked to 4.4 GHz) -- and this is one area where a RAID 0 array of SSDs actually results in meaningful performance gains. For people playing games, not so much.
The dilemma, taking my Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H motherboard as a typical example, was this: I wanted my RAID 0 SSD array (two PNY XLR8's comprising half a gigabyte) to co-exist with my Vertex 3 SSD boot disk. The typical Z77 motherboard only has two Intel SATA-III ports, and those ports are the only ones (to my knowledge) that offer native TRIM, while the supplementary Marvell SATA-III ports do not. Since junk collection (of the kind that supplements any modern SSD's own internal junk collection) is more critical on the boot drive, and is almost useless on a mostly read-only drive, I didn't have the option to move my Vertex 3 SSD boot disk over to those Marvell SATA-III ports. In the meantime, I did try out the RAID 0 SSD array on those Marvell SATA-III ports, which are supposed to provide a theoretical headroom of 1.2 GB/s (i.e., 600 MB/s x 2), but I got a stunningly offensive, ridiculous, laughable 350 MB/s or so read rate -- from a RAID 0 SSD array! Those PNY XLR8's are rated at around 500 MB/s read speeds on their own!
Bottom line, I felt that the optimal compromise was this: move the boot SSD onto the Intel SATA-II ports, hitting up against the bottleneck of 300 MB/s (whereas the drive normally performed at around 500 MB/s on the SATA-III port). Then, assign the RAID 0 array to the two native Intel SATA-III ports. No joke, in that configuration, using ATTO Benchmark, I got over 1.2 GB/s read speeds. That's a godsend for constantly pulling multiple compressed HD video source files (many of them over 1 gigabyte in size) into any complex video editing workflow.
I haven't found conclusive proof, but I suspect that the motherboard's Marvell SATA-III controller is grabbing (for life) onto a singlular PCI-E x1 lane, leaving way less bandwidth than necessary to live up to even one single 600 MB/s SATA port spec, let alone the aggregate of several SATA-III ports. Does that sound right? And moreover, what moron would engineer things this way, calling a port SATA-III when it performs sub-SATA-II?
I also suspect that this is fairly typical on today's best Ivy Bridge motherboards. Thoughts? We are all obviously trying to avoid the clutter of adding a dedicated RAID card, which would probably underperform in comparison to the native Intel controller anyway.

Alex DeJesus wrote:
So, is anything being done about the Marvel ports on newer motherboards?? Is it a firmware issue? I would like to put this behind me at some point. I find it hard to believe this topic hasn't come up before.
I'd like to get two RAID 0 arrays on four SATA 6 GBs ports for storage and another RAID 0 of SSD for system and programs
The only way to get more RAIDable 6Gb/s ports is to either get yourself a RAID card which in the case of your Z77 MB is not practical (it will cause your GPU x16 slot to operate at x8) or get the Asrock Z77 Extreme11 MB which has an on-board LSI SAS 2308 controller which interfaces to a PCIe 3.0 bus via a PCIe extender PLX 8747 bridge chip

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

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

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

Xserve RAID lost RAID 5 array on right/bottom controller

I cleanly shut down an Xserve G5 with an Xserve RAID attached and then powered off the Xserve RAID this morning. I replaced a failing memory module in the Xserve and moved the rack 6". I then powered on the Xserve RAID, waited for a couple minutes until it was fully booted, and then booted the Xserve. When it came up, my RAID 50 volume failed to mount. Upon further investigation, it appears that the RAID 5 array on the right hand disks is "gone". In RAID Admin (Disks and Drives tab), the left side array is visible, but all disks on the right side list status as "OK" and Type: as "Spare".
Configuration: Xserve RAID with 14 250 GB disks. Each side was configured with 6 disks in a RAID 5 array and one spare. These were striped using Software RAID on the Xserve into RAID 50 and mounted as a single volume. The RAID firmware is currently 1.5 and the Xserve is running OS X Server 10.4.3.
To summarize today's activities: under Apple's guidance (as this entire system is covered under a Premium Support contract), I swapped the (bottom) controller for the right side, updated firmware (from v1.3/1.20a to 1.5/1.50), multiple resets of both controllers, repeated forced firmware updates, etc.
Also, I swapped the left set of disks for the right set, and the array from the left set now shows up on the right side, and the missing array from the right is still missing with the disks on the left side. I replaced the disks to their original positions with the same results.
RAID Admin's Utility "Recognize Array" will not perform any operations on the rigth side disks and Apple tells me that there's nothing further that I can do with it.
None of this has solved the problem or substantially changed the issue, and the disks on the right side are still missing their associated array. Apple is unable/unwilling to offer any further help except to refer me to 3rd party data recovery services.
Does anyone have any suggestion at all that might possibly recover the missing array? Is anyone aware of any tools that I might use to recreate the RAID 5 array on the right controller? I was hoping that there might exist some low-level tools with which the disks could be recreated into an array by hand? Are there any commercial products that would work on this? Any other ideas?
Many thanks for any suggestions.
- Martin
Xserve RAID (14 250GB disks) on Xserve G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Not sure why you swapped the controllers back and forth
William, I don't think I was clear on this. I swapped the controller with a new controller that I had in a spare parts kit. This was at Apple's request.
really, RAID is not a backup...
I'm well aware, but despite my incessant warnings, users will become lulled in to a false sense of security when something "just works" for a very long time. This array wasn't intended to store valuable data that couldn't be lost, but...
It may be possible for Apple to re-create the RAID set, did you ask AppleCare about the possibility?
Apple has told me more than once that there's nothing else that they can do for me...and yet I keep calling back.
I was surprised that this array was lost when there were absolutely no prior signs of a problem and the system was merely shutdown and restarted cleanly. I'm more surprised and quite disappointed to learn that Apple will do nothing else for me (under a Premium Support contract) to attempt to repair a damaged array. When I asked questions about where the RAID information is stored, I received the answers: "I can't tell you that" and "Apple doesn't release that information". I did not get the feeling that they were working with me, but rather holding my hand while they walked me through published documentation.
I expected that there would be utilities (analagous to filesystem repair utilities) such as RAID Admin's "Recognize Array" that could help repair and recover damaged array data. I think that the lesson that I've leanred today is that I was naive to have expected such a thing without actually having investigated it ahead of time.
Anyway, thanks for your input, William.

Recover RAID 5 array with new root drive

Ok, I have a root mirror and a 4 drive RAID 5 array on an E250. The linker got hosed on the root partition and mount fails as a result. I've tried repairing the linker to no avail. So I replaced c0t0d0 with a brand new drive and put a fresh install on it. The second half of the mirror is still there and can be mounted now. The question is how to I restore the RAID 5 array to get to that data without losing data on the RAID 5 array ?
lidavidson

Ok, here's what I got:
From the new, fresh, root partition c0t0d0s0 the first 6 lines are the old root mirror that I copied over:
bash-2.05# more md.tab
# metadevice configuration file
# do not hand edit
d2 -m d0 d3 1
d0 1 1 c0t0d0s0
d3 1 1 c0t8d0s0
d5 -m d4 d1 1
d4 1 1 c0t0d0s1
d1 1 1 c0t8d0s1
d6 -r c0t9d0s1 c0t10d0s1 c0t11d0s1 c0t12d0s1 -k -i 32b
bash-2.05# metainit d6 -r c0t9d0s1 c0t10d0s1 c0t11d0s1 c0t12d0s1 -k -i 32b
metainit: tempest: there are no existing databases
bash-2.05# pwd
/etc/lvm
bash-2.05# cd ..
bash-2.05# more system
* Begin MDD root info (do not edit)
forceload: misc/md_trans
forceload: misc/md_raid
forceload: misc/md_hotspares
forceload: misc/md_sp
forceload: misc/md_stripe
forceload: misc/md_mirror
forceload: drv/pcipsy
forceload: drv/glm
forceload: drv/sd
*rootdev:/pseudo/md@0:0,2,blk
* End MDD root info (do not edit)
* Begin MDD database info (do not edit)
set md:mddb_bootlist1="sd:3:16 sd:59:16 sd:64:16 sd:72:16 sd:80:16 sd:88:16"
* End MDD database info (do not edit)
I also rebooted after copying the entries in /etc/system.

IX4-300D how do I import a new drive into RAID 5 Array?

I already had a 3 x 2TB RAID 5 array, added new forth drive (same 2TB drive model) and let it auto format, which completed OK, but when I look at Status in Admin I see "Unallocated 1.8TB". This tells me the drive was formated but not imported into the Array.
Looking at Drive Management Page it shows all four drives installed but offers no actions, you cannot even select a drive to display or take action on.
Going into Settings only shows the settings I used to create the RAID 5 initially, no other options. I would expect a workflow of right click new drive and select to import into RAID 5.
Looking in the help section no detail on RAID only a basic comment on what RAID is.
Something badly missing here. Is there some info I have missed?
Peter

Hello 2Old2Slow
I highly recommend that you do make plans to backup your data from the unit before attempting to expand the RAID just in case something goes wrong in the process.
When trying to expand an existing RAID 5 from 3 to 4 disks, you can use the "add disks to storage system" option that is located in Drive Management>Settings. This option will become available after a new drive is added to the empty drive and the unit is powered back on. It may need to overwrite the new disk, it will indicate which disk is being overwritten by marking the new drive with green stripes. If you are being asked to overwrite data but none of the disks show green stripes, please stop and backup first as proceeding will most likely result in all disks being overwritten.
LenovoEMC Contact Information is region specific. Please select the correct link then access the Contact Us at the top right:
US and Canada: https://lenovo-na-en.custhelp.com/
Latin America and Mexico: https://lenovo-la-es.custhelp.com/
EU: https://lenovo-eu-en.custhelp.com/
India/Asia Pacific: https://lenovo-ap-en.custhelp.com/
http://support.lenovoemc.com/

Both drives failed in RAID 1 array. How do I recover from this?

So I have a large problem on my hands; my RAID 1 array has 2 disks which have both failed. One disk failed at a time with a span of about a month between the 2 failures. Since I hear no clicking noises from the disks and I can still see both of them when I do a "diskutil list", I'm guessing the disk electronics are good as well, so I should be able to work with the disks. Here's the output from "diskutil checkRaid" :
Name: USB RAID Set 1
Unique ID: AD191DE5-49CB-4BEE-9362-D98B690DAC3A
Type: Mirror
Status: Offline
Device Node: disk2
Apple RAID Version: 2
# Device Node UUID Status
0 disk1s3 5D09E4DE-E0E9-4518-8672-F247F5CE0CBB Failed
1 disk3s3 431B65E0-DF51-4045-8C1E-CCB69E95916D Failed
Here's what I'd like to do: Although I have a good idea of which of the 2 disks has the most recent data on it, I'd like to be able to mount disk1s3 and disk3s3 independently and compare which has more data on it. Then, I'm going to plug in another USB hard disk and copy the data from the failed raid disk with the greatest disk utilization over to the USB disk I plugged in. At that point I'll trash the RAID 1 array and start over again. Of course I have no backup of my data, so just recovering isn't an option (my genius thinking was, "Ahh who needs backups, I'm using RAID!" Hah.. good one).
I tried doing the following to mount the slices: # diskutil mount disk1s3 and # diskutil mount disk1s3 force. Neither of which mount the disk. I've also tried specifying a mount point and that doesn't work either. All commands come back with "Volume disk1s3 mounted" but if I type "mount", I don't see it mounted anywhere. dmesg and /var/log/system.log don't give me anything useful about why the slices don't mount... the only thing I see from dmesg are the errors which started this mess:
HFS resolvelink: can't find iNode6487433
USBF: 107524. 33 AppleUSBEHCI[0x27c4800]::DoControlTransfer sync request on workloop thread. Use async!
AppleRAID::recover() member 5D09E4DE-E0E9-4518-8672-F247F5CE0CBB from set "USB RAID Set 1" (AD191DE5-49CB-4BEE-9362-D98B690DAC3A) has been marked offline.
AppleRAID::restartSet - restarting set "USB RAID Set 1" (AD191DE5-49CB-4BEE-9362-D98B690DAC3A).
disk2: media is not present.
HFS: err 6 reading VH blk (RAID 1)
jnl: flushing fs disk buffer returned 0x6
disk2: media is not present.
jnl: dojnlio: strategy err 0x6
jnl: writejournalheader: error writing the journal header!
AppleRAID::restartSet - restarting set "USB RAID Set 1" (AD191DE5-49CB-4BEE-9362-D98B690DAC3A).
AppleRAIDSet::addMember() detected expired sequenceNumber (12) for member 5D09E4DE-E0E9-4518-8672-F247F5CE0CBB
Also here's a diskutil list in case that's useful to anyone:
# diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: type name size identifier
0: Applepartitionscheme *74.5 GB disk0
1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 KB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 74.4 GB disk0s3
/dev/disk1
#: type name size identifier
0: Applepartitionscheme *931.5 GB disk1
1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 KB disk1s1
2: Apple_Boot 128.0 MB disk1s2
3: Apple_RAID 931.4 GB disk1s3
/dev/disk2
#: type name size identifier
0: Apple_HFS *931.4 GB disk2
/dev/disk3
#: type name size identifier
0: Applepartitionscheme *931.5 GB disk3
1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 KB disk3s1
2: Apple_Boot 128.0 MB disk3s2
3: Apple_RAID 931.4 GB disk3s3
/dev/disk4
#: type name size identifier
0: Applepartitionscheme *647.5 MB disk4
1: Applepartitionmap 31.5 KB disk4s1
2: Apple_HFS DiskWarriorCD 647.4 MB disk4s2
So, does anyone know how I can mount the slices independently so that I can grab the data off the useful slice?

Ok figured this one out myself. So the file system types that the FS is labeled with isn't known by the standard mount program, but really under the covers apple's software raid slice is just a HFS partition. Fantastic.
1) So first you figure out what slice you want to mount, in my case /dev/disk1s3 (oh ya, unlike the diskutil command, you need to actually specify the full path to the device so you need the /dev in there)
2) Create a mount point to mount the slice to "mkdir /Volumes/disk1s3" for example
3) Mount it up! "mount -t hfs /dev/disk1s3 /Volumes/disk1s3"
4) If you're interested in actually using the GUI to view the files, you can place an alias on your desktop by doing a "ln -s /Volumes/disk1s3 /Users/<putyour_user_namehere>/Desktop/disk1s3 "
This probably only works for a RAID 1 or maybe even a RAID 1+0 but in any case it allowed me to pull my data off so that I could back the data up and re-create the RAID 1 setup. You should only be doing this if both your drives get marked as failed, otherwise it's way easier to just use the disk utility to repair the array.

Video FX: video effects and editing drive (incl. RAID disk arrays)

Having had an issue with rendering iMovie effects and read through a few posted thread, I ran an experiment that pinpoints an incompatibility between iMovie and large size (800GB) RAID array volumes. Hence the following questions:
Is iMovie designed to support large sire RAID disk arrays ?
Could anybody test a non-RAID array large size (say 500GB or better 1000GB) volume to check if it is size or RAID dependent ?
When can we expect a fix ?
For more details, please read on.
Reading through the other threads talking about the Quartz composer effects, it sounds like the Apple programmers have a lot of work ahead to deliver a more robust 6.0.2 version.
I wanted to record the noticed incompatibility of working with a project outside the System & Application drive and applying Quartz composer effects.
Most keen videographers are using either a good large size external drive, a RAID array or a separate partition to store their video footage and editing work. So the noticed incompatibility needs to be looked into.
Interestingly, I read of other users having the same problem but Karl Petersen also mentionned that he didn't have the problem ...
So, what's wrong ? If the problem would be consistent, it would be easy to have Apple on their toes to fix it, but if not ...
So I ran a small experiment. I took the same iMovie project and copied it to my different disks and volumes (at least the ones where I had enough space) and tested 3 types of effects:
-1- the non-Quartz Composer 'fast/slow/reverse' effect, which caused me trouble already in iMovie '05;
-2- the Quartz Composer 'sepia tone' effect, which I was using without problem in the previous version;
-3- the non-Quartz Composer 'aged film' effect, which I was using without problem in the previous version;
My disk and volume configuration is the following:
-> First internal 500GB Serial ATA Disk split into 3 partitions:
a) 30GB System & Applications Drive (Start-up Disk);
b) 20GB Pictures Drive;
c) 415.6GB Partition as Slice 1 of my Apple RAID array;
-> Second internal 500GB Serial ATA Disk split into 4 partitions:
d) 15GB Virtual PC System & Applications Drive;
e) 15GB MAC & PC Documents Drive;
f) 20GB Musics Drive;
g) 415.6GB Partition as Slice 2 of my Apple RAID array;
-> Internal 831.3GB Apple RAID Array - striped RAID set made of 2 slices (volumes c and g above);
-> External 120GB FireWire Disk in one volume.
All volumes are formated using Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.
The result is consistent and points towards an incompatibility of iMovie with either very large size volume or RAID array. Indeed, all tested effects preview fine on all tested volumes, however, they can be applied seemlessly on all tested volumes apart for my large size RAID array.
When the project is on the RAID array, hitting the apply button results in the following:
For the non-Quartz Composer 'fast/slow/reverse' effect and the Quartz Composer 'sepia tone' effect, rendering starts but then stops a fraction of a second later (as if it was unable to write the rendered file to disk). Resulting image in the video viewer is shifted diagonally to leave a black corner on the bottom-left.
For the non-Quartz Composer 'aged film' effect, rendering starts and proceeds but the resulting image in the video viewer is again shifted diagonally to leave a black corner on the bottom-left. Note that resizing the iMovie window corrects this viewer issue.
Conclusion:
Is iMovie designed to support large sire RAID disk arrays ?
Could anybody test a non-RAID array large size (say 500GB or better 1000GB) volume to check if it is size or RAID dependent ?
When can we expect a fix ?
Regards,
Alex

I had the same problem rendering a movie with iMovie 6 when the file is placed on a second internal disk.
Clicking the 'Ignore ownership on this volume' tick box is a solution but I find it too blunt. My Mac is configured as a multiuser system and I bought the second internal disk to use it for my /Users directory. I thus don't want the different users to be able to create files in each others directories.
When unclicking the 'Ignore ownership on this volume' tick box again I'm surprised to find that rendering still works fine for all users with the desired file integrity.
I would have preferred to set up all the permissions using unix commands instead of all this magic. Can anyone explain the proper way to configure the correct permissions using the Terminal?
Power Mac G5 DP 1.8GHz Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Configuring 2 SATA drives for an OS X RAID 1 array & also for OS 9.

Does anyone know if a configuration like this might work in a G4 AGP Graphics "Sawtooth"?
• A SATA controller card that supports RAID 1, such as one of the FirmTek SeriTek cards at the below links:
[http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Firmtek/SATA1V4>
[http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Firmtek/SATA1EVE22>
• Two 500 GB, 640 GB, or 1 TB SATA drives.
• Partitioning 200 GB of each drive for use by OS 9 when booting directly into it.
• Using the two drives in a RAID 1 array when booted into OS X.
• Not installing a 3rd-party RAID software utility for OS 9.
Specifically, does anyone know what would happen when one boots into OS 9? Would the two drives simply be seen as two separate 200 GB partitions?

Hi-
Would the two drives simply be seen as two separate 200 GB partitions?
That is how it should work.
Go one better, and find SoftRAID 2.2 and RAID the 2 200 GB partitions for use in OS 9.

Combine OS and Data on same RAID 5 array

Our company is buying a new Xserve to replace our first XServe with 4 drives. Currently, we have the XServe set up with two RAID 1 arrays - one for data and one for the OS. Given that the new XServes no longer have four drives, we are trying to decide how we should configure the new RAID. We are thinking of going with a RAID 5 using all three disks. I would like to know if combining the OS and data on the same RAID array is contrary to best practices. Any perspective appreciated.
Thanks
Tim

Like so many thing - 'it depends'.
There is no one 'right answer'.
It depends largely on the application - what does this server do?
It also depends on the volume of data - how much data are you planning to store?
It also depends on the importance of the data on the machine, as well as backup replication and failover processes (if any).
Then you can add them all together and work out the cost/benefit analysis of the options.
For example, if you're running a database on the machine, you probably don't want RAID 5 at all.
If you have a robust replication and failover plan and can tolerate the entire machine crashing due to a failed disk, you might not care since you can run on the backup/failover until the machine is restored to production.
If data integrity is your primary goal and you don't currently have a backup plan you might opt for RAID 1 boot/data and the third drive as a hot spare or backup disk.
If this is your only machine you might benefit from using RAID 5 regardless of the application, but that only addresses one of many possible points of failure.
As you can see, there are so many variables the 'right' solution will depend on your particular circumstances.

Lost RAID 5 Array...

I have, er... had, a RAID 5 array comprised of six 180GB Apple Drive modules. The Xserve RAID had cache battery backups installed and was on a UPS, but I had disabled the drive cache for all drives quite some time ago as I wasn't sure how reliable the cache battery backups were anymore. This wasn't performance intensive, it was mainly a second repository for backups.
Unfortunately, I came in to work Friday morning to find the RAID powered down (in standby mode). I powered it back up (it was still shown as being mounted on the file server which is running Mac OS X Server 10.3.9, but the volume was empty and listed the correct amount free). Of course, that didn't bring up and data, so I rebooted both the Xserve and the Xserve RAID.
Disk Utility showed no array and neither did RAID Admin.
No luck. I've swapped controllers, upgraded the controllers to the latest firmware. Nothing.
I've searched through this discussion forum's history and tried everything I ran across (power up order of the Xserve and Xserve RAID, powering down the RAID, pulling the cache battery backups, and waiting five minutes, the "Recognize Array" feature in RAID Admin, DiskWarrior, etc). Nada.
Any additional suggestions? Most of the "lost array" discussions are from last year, so I'm surprised this happened to me (maybe because the Xserve RAID was still running old firmware). Also, what is the "Recognize Array" feature really for if it won't allow you to select drives to try to recognize?
I still have not tracked down how the RAID was powered down (it's in a private server room and I'm the only admin that manages the servers in there).
Thanks for any help or insight anyone can provide.
Dual 1.33Ghz Xserve G4 w/Xserve RAID Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Shane: Yes. I tried Disk Warrior, but as there's no RAID Set, there's no volume even available to try to repair.
Dave: Unfortunately, I came to the same conclusion that you have. Very odd that this issue seems so prevalent on the pre-1.5 firmware.
I've kissed my data goodbye (it was all backups, so not vital, but I would have liked to keep it), recreated the set and we'll see how it goes with the new firmware. I'm also setting up a second RAID to mirror the data to for more redundancy in the future.
Andrew: I'm sorry to hear you're having the same issue, but glad you've got a backup. This issue definitely is a big time waster in the least.
Unfortunately, it appears (from my experience, unless I too was missing some undocumented modifier key combo) that you have to have atleast one drive that still remembers what set it belongs to in order to use the "Recognize Array" feature.
From past discussions, I've gained that Apple can actually recover/rebuild the RAID set from drives sent to them, but in my case it wasn't worth spending any additional amount of money on getting the RAID set back up (my time was costly enough).

Access to SATA RAID-5 array without an MSI motherboard?

I have (had) an MSI K8N Diamoond Plus motherboard, and used it to create a bootable SATA RAID-5 array of three 300Gb Western Digital disks. Two years later, the motherboard developed a serious problem with the memory access, and now it won't POST beyond the memory initialization. So it's fried. I've tried multiple memory modules in multiple configs, and nothing helps.
OK, no problem, new motherboard and I'm good to go. Only this isn't an MSI motherboard, and it's an Intel chipset. So, the RAID array isn't recognized.
Are there any software tools that can reconstruct the RAID array when running on a non-nvidia chipset motherboard? Is there any other solution besides buy a new MSI motherboard?
And, if I have to get a new MSI motherboard to solve this, what's the cheapest currently available motherboard that would be compatible with the RAID established on the original K8N Diamond Plus?

Quote from: cameradv on 23-January-08, 00:07:27
Well, I'm not 100% sure which controller was doing the RAID. I'm thinking the SIL, but I beleive it was nvidia software drivers in windows that re-constructed the RAID-5 once when I replaced a drive. Can you buy a standalone nVidia RAID controller, anyway?
You were using Nvidia RAID, with Silicon can't do RAID5.

Lost RAID 5 array on upgrade to Leopard

I have a Highpoint RocketRAID 2314 controller connected to an external 4 drive RAID 5 array (1.5 terabytes). This device was working just fine with 10.4.10, and disappeared right after my upgrade to Leopard.
When I go in to Disk Utility, it says the partition map scheme is "Unformatted", it's locked, not writable, not ejectable, but does show 1.4 terabytes of total capacity. All options on this drive in Disk Utility are greyed out. I can't erase, partition, repair, etc... nothing.
I have the latest driver from Highpoint for the 2314 card, and it IS Leopard compatible.
Any idea how I can make my 1.5 terabyte array readable again? I have a lot of data on it, and dearly hope I haven't lost anything. I also tried moving the card to another slot to no avail. Anyone who has an ideas, I would very much welcome the help. I really don't care what my options are provided that I can get my data back. Thanks!

I've had terrible experiences with Highpoint. Their technical support is pretty bad and they don't go out of their way to help. I've completely lost confidence with their drivers and their software development. I've had to rebuild my RAID 5 a couple of times even though all the drives are fine. I'm constantly worrying that something like this is going to happen to me. Are there any other solutions for external drives and eSATA connectors for RAID 5??

Kernel Panic when using a new RAID 5 array

I recently set up a new Sans Digital 5 disk 7.2TB hardware RAID 5 array that's connected to a Sonnet Tempo-X eSATA 4+4 PCI-X card which has been updated to the latest drivers. The same card supports a number of JBOD enclosures that run as mirrored RAIDs under SoftRAID 4.0. My system is a 2.7Ghz DP Tower.
Upon trying to copy to the new RAID 5 volume I encountered a kernel panic and system freeze complete with wailing fans. After a few system restarts and a call to Sans Digital I tried to connect the RAID via USB upon the recommendation of tech support. Rather than causing a crash while copying I received an error message in the copy progress window that said that some files were locked and the process could not be completed and the RAID was no longer mounted in the finder.
I called Sans Digital back and they said it was probably a defective enclosure. I have just received a new one and have put that into service. All seemed fine until, when I was 30GB into a 900GB copy, the system froze. I have also tried to copy fewer files (400GB) and still get a Panic. When the RAID is idle there does not seem to be a problem. The last time the problem occurred the copy progress bar hung but the system did not fully lock up. The LEDs on the front panel of the RAID enclosure were flickering rapidly but no data was copying from my other drive. I turned off the RAID and was able to use my mouse again and restart my machine with a normal restart.
My system is running OS 10.5.8. When the RAID is off my computer runs fine.
Not sure what to try next. Any help would be appreciated - Thank you.

Hi-
I'd be interested to know if Sonnet has any comments regarding the issue.
In Utilities/Console/Logs, there should be some indication of what is occurring when the crashes occur.

Snow Leopard Installer Not Seeing RAID 5 Array

I currently have a Mac Pro with Leopard installed on an internal RAID 5 array. When I run the 10.6 installer to upgrade the only install disk choices I see are two external USB drives. The RAID 5 array is not in the list of possible install drives. Any idea what might be wrong here?

The fact it asked if you want to create RAID5 = Apple Pro RAID card was BTO and is present. Open it up, Apple's RAID card is there likely. And uses iPass so that your drive sleds connect to the controller rather than the motherboard Intel AHCI.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1346
http://www.apple.com/support/macpro/
Photo: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3514
RAID5 capacity - http://support.apple.com/kb/TA24883
RAID5 discussion from before (myself, mbean, poster)
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8446960
MaxConnect SAS/SATA Link for Mac Pro (iPass)
http://www.maxupgrades.com/istore/index.cfm?fuseaction=category.display&category _id=332
Apple Mac Pro RAID Card is an SAS controller
http://blogs.computerworld.com/applemac_pro_raid_card_is_an_sascontroller

Xserve SSD OS drive Raid 5 array - What if SSD OS drive is corrupt or fails

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