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Moving RAID drives on MacPro to new internal slot…Rebuild RAID? Or?
I’ve posted this yesterday to the Apple Support boards, no replies. Thought I’d toss it out here…
Moving one RAID drive to another internal slot
For reasons I won’t go into I need to move 1 drive of my RAID 0 array (2 1TB internal drives) from Slot 2 to Slot 4. When I do that, DU of course shows my previous RAID in Slot 2 as FAILED. It shows RAID Slice (disk1s2) as being there, but disk2s2 as FAILED. That’s to be expected. The mirrored RAID set shows DEGRADED, which is what I expect.
The drive I moved from Slot 2 to Slot 4 is now showing as FAILED, but still looks like it shows as a SLICE of the original Slot2/Slot 3 RAID array.
My choices appears to be to REBUILD the disk now in Slot 4, but is that possible without erasing all the data on the partner RAID disk (which appears to be working fine and all data accounted for) in slot 3? I don’t care if it erases all the data on the Slot 4 drive, but I do not want to lose all the data on the Slot 3 Drive.
If I can REBUILD the old SLot 2 (now Slot 4) drive, and rejoin it to the Slot 2 RAID, without erasing all the data on BOTH drives, that’s what I want to do.
Anyone done this before???? Am I missing any key data for you?
Alf
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4 Replies
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I’m going to answer my own post so that others in the future may be able to find this, since it doesn’t seem like anyone has experienced rebuilding an OSX software RAID array.
It *appears* that I will be able to rebuild without reformating both drives. I have found this on Apple’s web site:
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT2559
It says that rebuilding *appears* to be non destructive.
I certainly will make sure everything is backed up before attempting this. I’ll let the forum know how it goes.
Alf
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I don’t have an answer to your RAID questions, but backup your data before doing anything. Drives are cheap, reclaiming data is not.
John
MacPro 8-core 2.8GHz 8 GB RAM OS 10.5.8 QT7.6.4 Kona 3 Dual Cinema 23 ATI Radeon HD 3870, 24″ TV-Logic Monitor, ATTO ExpressSAS R380 RAID Adapter, PDE enclosure with 8-drive 6TB RAID 5
FCS 3 (FCP 7.0.2, Motion 4.0.2, Comp 3.5.2, DVDSP 4.2.2, Color 1.5.2)Pro Tools HD w SYNC IO & 192 Digital I/O, Yamaha DM1000, Millennia Media HV-3C, Neumann U87, Schoeps Mk41 mics, Genelec Monitors, PrimaLT ISDN
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Thanks. You are correct. Backup is essential whenever doing anything to a RAID array, unless you are extremely experienced (and therefore confident) in the process. I’ve not posted on what happened because I’m (slowly) backing up to Blue Ray, which takes forever. That way I can take the video to a safe deposit box and store offsite as well as on. My 2 TB drive is due here today. We’ve had a rash of home burglaries in our neighborhood lately, probably some meth freak, so I’m not taking any chances of losing footage. These home raiders seem to drive away with all your gear.
Once I figure this out I’ll post what happened in case anyone ever experiences this situation. It seems like rebuilding should NOT affect the good drive at all. We’ll see.
Alf
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The answer to my question appears that the rebuild of the moved RAID drive, and in general a rebuild of the RAID drive (specifically a Raid 1 mirrored set, not a striped drive), is that you won’t lose your data on the rebuild of the raid if one drive goes down. I backed up all my data on the remaining drive, put in the new drive, and rebuilt it. When it was done (about 3 hours for the 1 TB drive), all data was still on the primary remaining drive, also known as a slice. So while I would never rebuild a RAID array without fully backing up, it’s nice to know that it appears to work.
I also want to clarify that I’m using Apple’s OS/X software RAID, not with the RAID card.
Hope this helps anyone in the future that is stumped with this issue.
Alf
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