Coen Jeukens wrote:
I have just set it up as Raid1. You can't do this when you use the startup disk from the mini. And as you don't have a Superdrive ... you need to be creative. You need another Mac with Firewire.
I got tired of burning Beta DVDs so I started using an 8GB USB thumb drive. This works equally well to get an installer "DVD" on the optical drive-less Mini Server.
Using Disk Utility on a Mac with a DVD reader, select Restore. Drag the Snow Leopard Install DVD (or a disk image of a developer download) to the source for the restore. Drag the USB drive to the Destination and press Restore. All existing data on the thumb drive will, of course, be lost. When it's finished copying you will have the installer on a bootable USB flash drive.
Insert the USB thumb drive into a USB port on the Mini and boot while holding Option. Select the Mac OS X Install DVD (which is really the USB drive) and boot from that. From there you can run disk utility, change RAID config, run Repair Permissions, etc. Just like you were booted from the installer DVD.
Another plus is it's a LOT faster than installing from an optical drive, especially a remote one.