My iMac is running out of room on the internal drive. I want to move my movies and pictures off to an external device. I am currently backing everything up using Time Machine (and Super Duper). What I would like to do is move them off but maintain redundancy in case of a drive failure (in other words mirror the external drives). I was at the Apple store today and the rep there suggested a Drobo device. It looks really cool. But, the problem is I saw a lot of negative feedback on it, including data loss which totally defeats the purpose of paying so much money for it. I'm looking for a way to basically have two 1 TB drives mirrored off of my iMac that I can put my iPhoto, iTunes and Movies onto.
After doing some research today I still have a few basic questions about RAID arrays that I was hoping someone could answer.
1) Could I form a RAID 1 set using only two external HDDs, of the exact same capacity, make and model, and a MacBook with OS 10.5? That is, would I only need to connect the laptop to the external HDD enclosures, and the enclosures to each other, with the relevant cables and the software would do the rest?
2) I kept coming across the warning that a RAID array is redundancy and NOT a backup system. This seems simple enough: a file deleted accidentally on the source drive is deleted on the RAID array. So would I be right in saying that a RAID array along with a system running, say Carbon Copy Cloner with its archival backup, would provide both backup and redundancy?
I am thinking about buying a HD for a full system backup and all files. I am worried about getting such a big HD and having it fail, thus loosing years of data. Is there any redundancy in a 1TB drive does partitioning help? What if the entire drive fails or are there multiple drives in those external hd? I need a reliable backup system for music, photos of child, that will last years. I want to be able to use the HD with both formats, pc and mac...what should I format with or is that a good idea?
Looking for some specific but simple advice on buying a raid. If you could teach or share your thoughts, but fair warning I am not a tech and get easily confused. But seriously, port multipliers, pci card bottle necks, quad eSata ports, enclosures with raid and esata interface, pci-x? raid and port multipliers, hardware/software raids? What cables go where.
My specific needs and specs: I am looking for a fast drive configuration for use with my Intel 2008 macPro (Haprertown) OS: osx and windows vista. Needs to be compatible with both operating platforms. External solution please, the raid will be used with one box and will not need to be shared with other computers. Used for Video editing and high-resolution image sequence playback. I am looking to reach up to 300mbs if I have the budget, but that speed requirement might be too expensive for me, I am not sure? No redundancy or security required, everything is non critical. I will only need to run Raid 0 I do not want to do internal storage. To help with cost, I can get away with 250-500gigs, as space is not necessary. Think, speed, speed, speed. Price, Can I do this for $450?
The homework I have done thus far: The SSD drives are perfect for me but the price point is a little pricy when I can do similar speeds for less cash. Unfortunately I have ruled out SSDs. I think I am going the way of an eSata raid, just don't know how to configure something close to 300mbs? Do I do a pci raid card? Do I build a raid and buy a card? External, High speed Raid 0, no redundancy,(300mbs). Low storage capacity (to drive down cost for me if it is relevant?) Compatible with my Intel mac pro OSX Harpertown dual quad. Disk solution can be formatted to be used for either OS (vista or osx).
I currently have a 2TB WD mirror edition that is setup in RAID 1 so it will mirror all my data. Now I also have a bunch of other drives laying around which I also feel the need to back up and currently I am doing this by doing a whole bunch of dragging and dropping and copying and pasting etc etc etc and this is making me very tired. I know that a setup is possible in disk utility but I am not at all sure about how to configure it so I wont lose any of my data.
Some details about my setup: Mac OS X 10.5.6 PowerPc G5 Harddrives: two 1TB WD MyBooks, and two 500gig WD Mybooks --> these pairs need to mirror each other and make my life less of a hassle.
I am looking to build my own external RAID setup and have it function as another set of internal ones. Is it possible to buy a computer case and put in a raid card and a power source and just run SATA cables to my mac pro?
I have a 8-core MP 2.8Ghz with 10gb ram and Ati 2600HD. I'll someday replace the ATI with a quadro (all my application is 3d/CAD/Design) I'm installing 4 of the WD640 drives, they arrive on Friday.
I would love to order the CalDigit RAID card but after searching I finally figured out it's not available until next month.
That said, I need my system to start working ASAP and I don't want to wait if I don't have to.
I'm a designer, I need fast scratch so some striping needs to be involved. I also need data protection. At this capacity Time Machine isn't going to be of any use and I'd prefer redundancy anyway.
The 4 WD640s are replacing: 1 750gb 7200.11, 2 WD SE16 500GBs, and 1 320GB (Apple Stock Drive).
I would like to sell some of those drives to defray the cost of this endeavor but I'm open to keeping 1 or possibly 2 as external drives or stuffing one into the optical bay with a converter.
I want speed and reliability, of course! But really the largest motivator here is the combined drive aspect. Having so many volumes is driving me nuts.
My intention had been RAID 5 or 6 but I now know that Apple Software RAID can't do this. So now it seems with software RAID 0+1 would be the only option.
Realistically, does the cpu performance degradation outweight the speed gained from striping the drives? It's so difficult to determine bottlenecks.
Any thoughts on my best bet without/before the RAID card arrives. Can I migrate the array after installing the card without data loss?
If I just JBOD the drives can the concatenated set be broken up ever? I was thinking I could JBOD until the card came.
I'm having a problem with my external RAID that I use between my G4 Laptop (10.5.x) and G4 tower (10.4.x). I downgraded the G4 laptop to 10.4.x so I can run Classic (kids educational software), and gain some speed. I backed everything up to my external RAID (two HD's RAID together). The downgrade install onto the laptop went perfectly. I went to restore some files from the RAID backup, and I got this error when trying to mount the external RAID: "the disk you inserted is not readable by this computer".
I just ignored the error and did not touch the RAID. I then re-connected the RAID to my G4 tower that had previously mounted successfully, and same error: "the disk you inserted is not readable by this computer". This time I started Disk Utility, and it sees the RAID and it's volume set, but it is "Locked" (see attached pics). I think I need to first mount it to change any "access control list" or permissions, but I can't figure out how to mount, and then change permissions/ACL.
I'm looking to set up a 4+ drive external eSATA raid system (likely raid5). My biggest need is quiet. I've tried 2 boxes thus far including the 4big quadra that was supposed to be engineered for noise, but it had an annoying fan speed fluctuation and was actually much louder than my mac pro. I have a drobo and that is also too noisy. I'm wondering of anyone knows of a box or other option that is either fanless (ideally) or has one large super quiet fan.
I recently installed os 10.6 on my MacBook, upgraded to 10.6.2 and everything was still working fine. Then, without thinking, I ripped out my shuffle and plugged in my mirrored (software) raid array of 2 drives. I immediately got the dimmed screen / you must restart your computer in all languages-screen. Now, whenever I plug in the raid into the usb the computer's screen goes dim and I get the same error message in all languages. I've tried booting with the install disk, still crashes. I have all my most important files on that drive.
When I bought my 13" MBP I swapped out the 160 GB stock HDD with a 320 GB one. The 160GB HDD is just laying around now and I would like to use it as an external storage device.
I have Mac Pro with Digidesign/ProTools interface connected. I sometimes switch sound output from MP to run through the digidesign hardware. I'm getting message right now saying "selected device has no output controls", not allowing me to switch. I rebooted with the interface already turned on. I've run into theis before- can't figure out what causes this to happen. Sometimes it's OK. ?
My Macbook Pro 2.4 got force restarted a few times because it was locking up (a friend's faulty external drive I was trying to fix). It was running fine, then when I tried to connect my own external drives they wouldn't mount anymore and I got this error: /system/..../IOStorageFamily.kext was installed improperly.
I came here and read up on common solutions. I have: - Ran Disk utility repair and repair permissions - Followed this article: [URL] - In verbose and single user mode all I get is the dreaded "waiting for root device" over and over. They all have not worked so far. However in safe mode it actually boots. It seems to me that some drivers were perhaps corrupted when I turned it off abruptly and now it has trouble mounting any drive. What are my options at this point?
I have a credit card terminal I want to use at a farmers market and it has a phone jack and an ethernet jack. If I have my laptop connected to my iphone via the hotspot (wifi), how can I get the terminal to see the laptop as a network? I assume if I just plug it into the the lapto via ethernet cabel, it will not see any connection for use, though I have not tried this yet. Is there some sort of interface or connecter that goes between the two so I can share my connection with another piece of hardware?
I have a PowerMac G5 and need to purchase an internal RAID card to create a RAID 1 mirror of the system drive... one that will allow me create a Hardware RAID 1 mirror, not software RAID through OS X.
I just bought a Guardian Maximus RAID1 kit and I have two 1TB drives in it. I'm using it over Airport Extreme as an airdisk (mac osx 10.6.2)
My question is simply: am I running a risk by partitioning it into two partitions? Should I ever have to rebuild the failed disk (which I understand is really simple with the Guardian Maximus) - will it have trouble doing two partitions? I'm using one 500gb partition for time machine and one 500gb partition as redundant itunes/media.
I have a Lacie ext hard drive with 2 x 250gb HD that were one RAIDed into a single 500gb HD. I ran this update Lacie firmware update: http://www.lacie.com/support/drivers...r.htm?id=10053 And now my HD will only show up as two separate HDs of 250gb instead of a single RAID HD of 500gb.
I have a slight problem with my volume controls on a Macbook Pro. They're not doing exactly what I want them to. I have an external sound card and by selecting it as my default audio device the macbook pros own volume control gets locked and there's no way to adjust it. This means that it renders the keyboard and Remote control volume buttons useless and I still have to run across the room to adjust the volume on my audio device when I'm watching a movie through the tv away from the macbook. Is there no way to enable this function anyway so both controls work?
Another one of those "external hard drive not recognized" problems: I am using a Mac Mini. The external LaCie drive is in one of those beautiful boxes designed by a guy named Porsche. It's connected via Fire Wire. I have my iPhoto library stored on it. It was working just fine for the past two days after I first connected it.
Now it does not show on the Desktop. It is identified only as "Unknown device" in "About This Mac." iPhoto doesn't recognize it. I've looked at the other threads on this subject here and have reset the PRAM. Disk Utility recognized it for a while and said the disk was OK. Now Disk Utility does not recognize it at all.
I turned off the drive and turned it back on. That resulted in an alarming series of beeps, almost like somebody was sending the Morse code symbol for "E" over and over again. I turned the drive off and then on again. Now the light goes on and the drive whirs nicely. I am using System 10.6.2. Or rather, at this point it is using me.
Yesterday I took delivery of the following kit- http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/produc...firewire-.html
As you can see, it comes with the FCA202 Audio interface - http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/produc...io-fca202.html
I opted for the FireWire package as it has the most better quality mics. I got it all hooked up, but for some reason, my Mac is not recognising my new sound device at all. I was looking under the Sound part of the Control Panel, but nothing new would register. I checked the FireWire part of the Device Manager (appologies I forget the actual name of the application). The Firewire device was listed as "Unknown", if I was to remove the device and refresh, it would show nothing. So i've got the feeling that its been seen, just not recognised correctly.
I tried a few things to try and help my situation.
1) Disconnecting any other attached device 2) Rebooting several times 3) Leaving system off and unplugged for 10-15 mins 4) Updating all software 5) Resetting my xxxx (I forget the term, but it involved rebooting holding CMD, Option, R and P) - can someone confirm how I know if this was actually reset? 6) Going into Activity Manager and confirming the Audio driver is loaded
From what I've read, Firewire config issues can be common with Macs. I am running an 18 month olf iMac 20" with 4 gig ram. I've not used my FireWire port for a while, about 6 months ago I used a FW external HD which didn't have any problems with. Alas I don't have any other FW devices to plug in and test the port. The final thing I'm going for is to leave the system unplugged for 10 hours, which will be ready to check after work.
One thing I was thinking about though - would getting a powered FW hub be of use at all?
Line-in external tape recorder produces VU sound level fluctuations but the sound doesn't come out the internal speakers. iTunes and Internet sources play OK.
Is it possible to get a highpoint raid controller and put those 4 drives in a raid 5 array (and then create partitions inside that array) - or do you need to have 1 drive by itself for the operating system, and then create a raid array using the remaining 3 drives?
Lastly, are the highpoint 3500 series a decent card? and fully compatible?
I have a new Mac Pro Quad 2.93 with the Mac RAID card installed with four 1TB drives setup in a RAID 5 array. When creating the volumes in the RAID utility, you can not edit them, resize, etc. If one large volume is created in the RAID utility, you can then partition that one volume using the Apple Disk Utility, which then allows you to resize if needed.
