Rebuilding RAID set failed with the error: Unrecognized Filesystem.

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Rebuilding RAID set failed with the error: Unrecognized Filesystem.

I have a mirrored RAID on our small office server.

One of the drives had an error, so I removed it, and am replacing it with a new drive.

However, when I try to rebuild the RAID with the new disk, I get the following error:

"Rebuilding RAID set failed with the error: Unrecognized Filesystem."

I have tried all sorts of ways of erasing, partitioning, etc. to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) - which is what the RAID set is - but with no success.

Does anyone have ideas? Thanks.

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.5), Server / Workstation

Posted on Apr 25, 2008 7:58 AM

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Answer 1

Apr 25, 2008 10:08 AM in response to gsfunkarch

Can you pop the old drive back in? What is the error message?

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Answer 2

gsfunkarch Author

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Apr 25, 2008 10:56 AM in response to Sherman Homan

I sent the old drive back to Seagate - it was still under warranty and they sent me a replacement drive.

The error with the old drive was regarding SMART failure.

When I got the new drive - I put it in and upon restarting the computer got a request to initialize the disk as the OS couldn't recognize it. I initialized and then formatted and partitioned to HFS Extended (Journaled) and the drive appears to be working 100%...just won't allow me to rebuild as part of RAID.

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Answer 3

Apr 25, 2008 11:00 AM in response to gsfunkarch

What happens if you shuffle the other drives around, I am wondering if there is a problem with the bay the hard drive goes into.

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Answer 4

gsfunkarch Author

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Apr 28, 2008 7:34 AM in response to Sherman Homan

I tried shuffling the drives but I get the same error....!

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Answer 5

gsfunkarch Author

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Apr 28, 2008 7:51 AM in response to gsfunkarch

Here is a page with some workarounds:

http://blog.smalldog.com/article/1007/software-raid-in-os-x-leopard

Apparently this is a known bug...

Message was edited by: gsfunkarch

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Answer 6

gsfunkarch Author

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Apr 29, 2008 6:54 AM in response to gsfunkarch

I tried the workarounds but they did not work.

Step 1: Booted off the Leopard Server Disk and ran Disk Utility but got the same error.

Step 2: Started Terminal and did the following but also got the same error.
diskutil list (to find the partition that is going to be added)
diskutil checkRAID (to get the RAID UUID)
diskutil addToRAID member <device name> <raid uuid>
diskutil checkRAID (to watch the rebuild)

I'm stumped! Any ideas?

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Answer 7

May 12, 2008 10:30 AM in response to gsfunkarch

This is still not fixed in 10.5.2. I suppose that rebuilding a RAID should be done in single user mode. the work around is here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1212964&tstart=0

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Answer 8

Jul 28, 2008 7:47 PM in response to gsfunkarch

I'm running 10.5.4 and I've run in to the Unrecognized Filesystem error when changing out a 750GB drive in a mirror.

I've used the above CLI and the GUI in Disk utility kicked in. It's started showing 95! hours of rebuild time and 10 minutes later it's down to 10 hours.

Hopefully this works.

Thanks to the above for posting the commands.

What's with Apple allowing this to go on through 4 updates?

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Answer 9

tocci

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Sep 2, 2008 1:28 PM in response to gsfunkarch

I got the same Unrecognized Filesystem error even when I went to the Terminal and put in the commands manually. It occurred to me that the G-Raid I was trying to pair with a single drive might not be compatible with mirroring so I went out and bought a 500gig external for $100 at Walmart and bang, its working.

I'm a bit disappointed that this problem hasn't been resolved in this forum since it would appear there is no issue open with Apple Tech Support. I'd advise anyone trying this and getting an error to make sure they are on the latest version of Leopard and not using a G-Raid device. I had walked away in frustration after reading this page and finding it is unresolved, I'd hate for others to do the same and waste a lot of time thinking there is an issue when there isn't.

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Answer 10

Oct 13, 2008 3:07 PM in response to gsfunkarch

I have solved this issue.

When I was trying to rebuild the software RAID set, I was doing so while booted off of the Mac OS X Leopard Installer CD. Apparently, you CANNOT do this. What I'm assuming is that in order for the rebuild to work correctly, you have to be booted off of a volume that can be written to.

SO.....

I put my laptop into target disk mode, booted the server off of that target, and then rebuilt the RAID. Worked perfectly.

Alex

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Answer 11

Nova

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Nov 17, 2008 12:58 PM in response to gsfunkarch

10.5.5 update fixed this error for me. glad it was patched by the time i needed it... pretty bad that it went so long without being patched.

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Answer 12

Jan 2, 2009 9:29 AM in response to Nova

I don't know, I am using OSX 10.5.4, and the problem wasn't fixed for me. I had to do as in the article above:

* diskutil list (to find the partition that is going to be added)
* diskutil checkRAID (to get the RAID UUID)
* diskutil addToRAID disk0 /Volumes/RAID
* diskutil checkRAID (to watch the rebuild)
* diskutil removefromRAID (to remove the “Failed” drive once the rebuild is done)

My replacement disk came up as disk0 and I had already removed the bad disk so I didn't need to use the removefromRAID command.

Apple should really update their article here to show this:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3305

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Answer 13

Jan 3, 2009 4:35 AM in response to -scstraus-

Correction. I was using 10.5.5 on my RAID disks, but a 10.5.4 OSX CD to boot from.

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