RAID Problem HELP!!!!

[Jerry Alto]

Mark- We have been running a SATA array (2×250) for over a year. Recently we added two new drives and put all four drives into a new 4-bay SATA external enclosure (we stayed with our two channel PCI SATA controller). We definitely had some issues when we tried to mount the new drives. Then we had issues when we tried to remount the old drives and we thought we had lost all of our FCP project media files.

We eventually got the old raid remounted but it had created a LOST folder and inside that folder was four additional folders that had all of our media files from our FCP projects. We had to rebuild our FCP file directories to get everything going again.

What I recomend you try if you have media files you want to save on your original drives;

Shut everything down. Re-intstall your old SATA controller card and be sure to plug in the same controller outlet to the exact same drive as you had it before. Fire up the drives till they are up to speed then boot up. Hopefully your original raid will be on the desk top and you are back in business.

Then back up that raid onto an external firewire drive (can be time consuming if you have lots of media but its worth it.)

Unmount the orignal raid using disk utility (this is probably where your problem started if you didn’t do this when installed your new controller card).

Shut everything down.

Re-install the new 4-port PCI card and connect the four drives.

Start up the drives til they are up to speed then boot-up the computer.

Hopefully a dialog box will ask about new drives and you go to disk utility and if its a good day your old raid will be there and you select it and click the blue MOUNT button. Then you should have two blank drives there and you build a second raid.

If the old drives are there but not as a raid you’ll have to format them (which will erase them) as a new raid. Then you’ll have to copy over the media files you backed up on the firewire drive>launch FCP project and relink your media.

Some things we’ve learned:
1. They say SATA are hot swappable but you’d better know exactly what your doing before you try it.
2. Before you install new drives or new PCI cards you need to UNMOUNT the old drives before you boot down.
3. You don’t unmount the drive by right clicking on it and choose eject. You go to Disk Utility>Select Raid>Unmount (blue button on top).
3. Keeping connections from the proper SATA connector to the correct drive is very important once the raid has been established.
4. The computer KNOWS when PCI cards, hard drives or SATA cables have been switched.
5. FCP knows that you have swictched drives and you have to reset scratch drives.

Remember, this is from one situation so I’m no expert. I thought I would pass on what I THINK I’ve learned.

Hope this helps.
Jerry

[Mark Hayes]

Jeryy,

Thanks for your detailed response. Last night I took my MAC to a MAC repair shop, since I was unable to get the drives to be recognized by Disk Repair. I just read your response to the technician. At this point I would be thrilled just to get the raid back. I have so much stuff on there, it’s sad.

Before I bought the MAC to the shop, I reinserted the original two port RADI card. I emphasized your comment about the correct wires being in the correct order. I told him to try to swap the cables. Maybe this will help.

My fear is that I damaged, or worse — deleted the RAID info and it will be next to imposssible to put the tow drives back together.

Thanks again for your help. I’ll let you know what happens.

Mark

[Jerry Alto]

Mark- Sounds like you are on the right track. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you. Let me know how it works out and any new info on SATA raids.

Jerry

[Mrvideo]

That is a lesson to be learned – never muck with a software induced RAID 0 stetup with needed data left there to be recovered. A RAID parses data across two or more drives in bytes of 8 or 16 bits per write.

When the RAIDed drives are separated, the order of the parsing is lost, therefore the entire data set.

[Mrvideo]

That is a lesson to be learned – never muck with a software induced RAID 0 stetup with needed data left there to be recovered. A RAID parses data across two or more drives in bytes of 8 or 16 bits per write.

When the RAIDed drives are separated, the order of the parsing is lost, therefore the entire data set.