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more space for my Xserve RAID
Hi there all, my problem/question is:
A year ago I never expected using up all 7×400 Gb drives that currently populate the left side of my Xserve Raid (sure I’m not the only one who might have felt the same…) Well I still have about 800 Gb free BUT… I don’t wanna wait until, you know, it’s too damn late.
So, what to do? Can I just add Apple Storage Modules in the right side of that thang and keep on going? Will that simply increase the size of my actual RAID volume or will it mount as a second RAID volume? I don’t see any 400 Gb ASM on the Apple store, only 250 & 500 Gb… will it be OK to mix sizes?
Thanks in advice
Chemix
Canary Islands“editing in paradise”
BUNKER studio
“edit in paradise” -
1 Reply
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Chemix,
Think of the right side of your Xserve RAID as a whole separate RAID. It will be separate from your current RAID. If you’re using it for video editing or need the best possible speed, the you can stripe the two sides of your RAID together into one big RAID using Disk Utility. However, to do that you’ll need to backup everything from your current drives (the left side) as striping the two halves together will destroy everything on there currently. Just buy a couple big Firewire drives to back up to (you should do that anyway, as only having your files on the RAID is a recipe for disaster when it eventually fails).
Again, if you want to use the RAID for video, what you should do is reformat the left side to on big RAID 5 (if its not all ready) and do the same for the right (this is default). Then open Disk Utility and stripe the two sides together as “Mac OS Extended (not journaled)” and “Striped RAID Set.” You’ll also, want to change some of your settings in RAID Admin so you can get better speed and not drop frames, but I won’t get into that right now.
You can use 500gb drives, but when you stripe the two halves of the RAID together you’ll loose the extra storage that the bigger drives provide. Another way to go is to just buy a new fully loaded RAID and sell your current one. This actually might be the easiest and best solution for many reasons and you’ll get even more space as it will be all 500gb drives on both sides. One other solution, just because I have one left, is to buy a used Xserve RAID with the drives you need in it. I have a fully loaded one that has 14 400gb drives in it (and the cache backup batteries) that you can buy for $6,200. You can then either take what you need from it (even keep some extra drives as backups) and sell the rest on Ebay etc. Anyway, I just thought I’d throw that out there.
Let us know if you have any problems or need more help.
Tony!
alter_ego2@mac.com
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