Help with RAID problem - JBOD

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Level 1

24 points

Help with RAID problem - JBOD

I have two JBOD arrays created in the Apple OS software - main drive is 4 disks creating 36 TB and my backup array is 7 disks creating 52 TB. I have multiple problems that I need to solve:

I need more back-up space and so need to add a drive to this array. Apparently there is a glitch in Sonoma and I cannot add anything to a RAID there. SO - I am looking for another RAID software program that will allow me to move the existing 7 disks to the new software as a JBOD without losing any data AND that will allow me to add a new disk. Any ideas? I looked into Softraid - but it won't allow you to add a drive for JBOD.
My 4 disk array apparently has a disk going bad and I need to replace it - again - without being able to add a blank one to this in Sonoma, I am screwed. So back to my points in number one.

Anyone else have a similar problem? Any workarounds? Any software recommendations that would work for me? Perhaps I should re-install a previous OS version (this actually seems like the best course of action)?

I am on the latest version of Sonoma 14.4.1. This is a new Mac Studio M2 - so I skipped all previous versions after High Sierra. Should I revert to Ventura?

Posted on May 2, 2024 2:07 PM

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Answer 1

Knightspirit Author

Level 1

24 points

May 2, 2024 4:50 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

My understanding is that you CAN add and remove drives from the JBOD on Mac. You just have to remember to have enough space to accommodate the data on the drive that you want to remove - as it will transfer it to the other drives. Why would there be an option to add a drive if it wasn't an option? Might not be possible with other forms of RAID (I am not an expert by any means on any of this) but I think it is for JBOD. I should have mentioned that I did reach out to Apple via Apple Care about this - and they did not mention that it was not possible - only that there was a glitch in Sonoma that hangs up the process...

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Answer 2

May 2, 2024 5:15 PM in response to Knightspirit

Conventional wisdom was that RAID sets were delicate, and one false move might erase everything. So before attempting such an operation, make a backup of the RAID. But once you have that Trusted Backup, you are free to completely re-arrange everything, because you have a backup.

Add a disk to a disk set using Disk Utility on Mac - Apple Support

if this is only precluded by bugs in Sonoma, I Don't recommend you revert your main system back to a previous version. it extremely tedious, and you don't really need that. and you could wreck your work flow by resurecting old Bugs.

Instead, adjust Security settings so you can boot from an external drive, and use your current running MacOS to start the install of an older version onto the external drive. Then boot from the newly installed external drive and attempt your re-arrangements from there.

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Answer 3

Knightspirit Author

Level 1

24 points

May 13, 2024 11:55 AM in response to MrHoffman

Thanks - I am using the Apple software in the OS - so they are calling it a JBOD - whether it is actually that or not I can't say. The software allows "hot" adding of disks to the array and then a delete function as well - whereby it will add the data from the disk that is selected for deletion and move it onto available space before deleting. That is the promise anyway. I got a disk added, so now I am just trying to delete what OWC soft raid is telling me is a failing drive:

Softraid does not allow adding or deleting apparently - so am using the Apple disk utility.

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Answer 4

May 2, 2024 2:40 PM in response to Knightspirit

all kinds of RAID are a very special setup.

In general, you have never been able to add a drive to a RAID without zeroing the RAID. I expect that applies to JBOD as well.

The thing that makes a set of Drives into a RAID is recorded in the Driver on the Drives, NOT inside your Mac.

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Answer 5

Knightspirit Author

Level 1

24 points

May 13, 2024 10:17 AM in response to Knightspirit

UPDATE - I moved my enclosures over to my iMac running Ventura and was immediately able to add another 16 TB drive. However - now I am unable to delete the drive I need to delete. Apparently, it has to be the last drive in the array - which it apparently was as I was able to select it (no other drive was selectable) but when I went to delete it - I got an error message that it had to be the last drive in the set to be deleted. DOH! Disk utility does not allow you to select just any drive to delete - it only allows the selection of the last drive - so I should not be getting that error message!

I COULD just erase the whole set - remove the drive and re-load it - but we are talking about almost 40 TB here - so that would take about a week with my current connections (seriously).

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Answer 6

May 13, 2024 10:24 AM in response to Knightspirit

Try to set it up in the background and let it run 24/7, and it will be completed soon enough.

What exactly is the pinch-pont?

if WiFi, add an ethernet cable with 8 conductors so you can run at Gigabit speeds.

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Answer 7

May 13, 2024 10:56 AM in response to Knightspirit

I’m guessing you’re using a SPAN volume, not JBOD.

JBOD isn’t RAID. It’s “just a bunch of disks”, and that doesn’t involve software or hardware RAID at all.

RAID-0 striping or a concatenated / spanned volume is largely for performance or for capacity, and is fragile at best.

SPAN seems to best match the configuration you’re reporting here.

Since you’re looking at alternatives…

With semi-recent storage, 60 TB raw is achievable with two to four HDDs.

I’d look at a Synology NAS RAID array here. Or at a Promise direct-attached array. I’ve worked with both.

NAS (with Time Machine server support!) allows sharing a big pool across multiple hosts, too.

Either Synology or Promise configured for RAID-1 or RAID-6, and preferably not RAID-5. (As volume capacities increase, RAID-5 failure recovery is somewhere between risky and catastrophic.) Or configured as a big non-protected storage pool (SPAN), or maybe as RAID-0 if you really want that.

Whether you can add HDDs (or SSDs) to a RAID configuration depends on the controller. With the hardware I use, hot add is a fairly commonly available feature given empty bays in the array or an expansion array as available, though reorganizing the arrays can sometimes take a while. Most folks shut down for that, as hot-expansion tends to be an expensive feature, and I’m aware of only one operating system that can hot-expand a mounted and active volume.

If you want to stay with software solutions, OWC offers SoftRAID, not that I’ve used that.

Calculation tool: https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/RAID_calculator

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Answer 8

Knightspirit Author

Level 1

24 points

May 13, 2024 2:41 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

I have no idea what diskutil is in Terminal - but I put in the command and got this - this is the disk that is apparently going bad:

/dev/disk4 (external, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *6.0 TB disk4

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk4s1

2: Apple_RAID 6.0 TB disk4s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk4s3

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Answer 9

Knightspirit Author

Level 1

24 points

May 13, 2024 3:03 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

First half:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *2.0 TB disk0

1: Apple_APFS_ISC Container disk1 524.3 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_APFS Container disk3 2.0 TB disk0s2

3: Apple_APFS_Recovery Container disk2 5.4 GB disk0s3

/dev/disk3 (synthesized):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: APFS Container Scheme - +2.0 TB disk3

Physical Store disk0s2

1: APFS Volume Macintosh HD 10.2 GB disk3s1

2: APFS Snapshot com.apple.os.update-... 10.2 GB disk3s1s1

3: APFS Volume Preboot 6.1 GB disk3s2

4: APFS Volume Recovery 924.3 MB disk3s3

5: APFS Volume Data 1.3 TB disk3s5

6: APFS Volume VM 4.3 GB disk3s6

/dev/disk4 (external, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *6.0 TB disk4

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk4s1

2: Apple_RAID 6.0 TB disk4s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk4s3

/dev/disk5 (external, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *2.0 TB disk5

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk5s1

2: Apple_RAID 2.0 TB disk5s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk5s3

/dev/disk7 (external, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *6.0 TB disk7

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk7s1

2: Apple_RAID 6.0 TB disk7s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk7s3

/dev/disk8 (external, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *6.0 TB disk8

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk8s1

2: Apple_RAID 6.0 TB disk8s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk8s3

/dev/disk9 (external, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *14.0 TB disk9

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk9s1

2: Apple_RAID 14.0 TB disk9s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk9s3

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Answer 10

Knightspirit Author

Level 1

24 points

May 13, 2024 3:05 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

2nd half:

/dev/disk10 (external, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *12.0 TB disk10

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk10s1

2: Apple_RAID 12.0 TB disk10s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk10s3

/dev/disk11 (external, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *12.0 TB disk11

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk11s1

2: Apple_RAID 12.0 TB disk11s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk11s3

/dev/disk12 (external, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *6.0 TB disk12

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk12s1

2: Apple_RAID 6.0 TB disk12s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk12s3

/dev/disk13 (external, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *16.0 TB disk13

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk13s1

2: Apple_RAID 16.0 TB disk13s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk13s3

/dev/disk14 (external, virtual):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: Apple_HFS Work Drive +52.0 TB disk14

/dev/disk15 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme +17.4 GB disk15

1: Apple_APFS Container disk16 17.4 GB disk15s1

/dev/disk16 (synthesized):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: APFS Container Scheme - +17.4 GB disk16

Physical Store disk15s1

1: APFS Volume iOS 17.2 21C62 Simul... 16.9 GB disk16s1

/dev/disk17 (external, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *24.0 TB disk17

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk17s1

2: Apple_RAID 24.0 TB disk17s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk17s3

/dev/disk18 (external, virtual):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: Apple_HFS Work Drive Back Up +52.0 TB disk18

/dev/disk19 (disk image):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme +12.9 GB disk19

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk19s1

2: Apple_HFS Shared Support 12.6 GB disk19s2

Mac-Studio:~ jeffleland$

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Answer 11

Knightspirit Author

Level 1

24 points

May 2, 2024 5:24 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Yes - I will try that - sounds like the best option! I really didn't want to try and revert back. Thanks for the responses, I will give that a try.

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Answer 12

May 13, 2024 1:52 PM in response to Knightspirit

could you post a Terminal

diskutil list

that includes that Volume ?

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Answer 13

May 13, 2024 2:57 PM in response to Knightspirit

can you post the whole output of diskUtil list, not just that one, everything.

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