New hard drive and RAID striped set

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Level 1

10 points

New hard drive and RAID striped set

Hi there, I've got two existing 500GB hard drives, one with the OS on it. I recently bought a 1TB drive to upgrade. What's the best way to do this?
I'm intending using the new 1TB as TimeMachine backup and wondered if I should stripe RAID the other two discs.
If I boot from my Snow Leopard disc in the CD drive, and attempt to RAID stripe-set the two 500s, will I lose everything currently on them or do they get archived, keeping everything as it was?
Any advice would be appreciated..!
Billy.

Intel Mac Pro, Macbook Pro, iPhone 3g, 3Gs, Video iPod, iPad, AppleTV., Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Jan 27, 2011 3:43 AM

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Answer 1

japamac

Level 7

24,400 points

Jan 27, 2011 4:54 AM in response to Louiecypher

If I boot from my Snow Leopard disc in the CD drive, and attempt to RAID stripe-set the two 500s, will I lose everything currently on them

Yes, you will lose everything.

To keep everything as "it was", use a cloning utility like SuperDuper!.

Install the 1 TB drive in addition to the boot drive.
Use SuperDuper! to clone all files to the 1 TB drive.
Check that the clone is functional (boot to it).

Now, set up the RAID set, and then use SuperDuper! to clone the system and files on the 1 TB drive to the RAID set.

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Answer 2

Louiecypher Author

Level 1

10 points

Jan 27, 2011 7:37 AM in response to japamac

Aha..! Sounds like a plan. Thanks!

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Answer 3

Jan 27, 2011 8:18 AM in response to Louiecypher

Hi

When you create a RAID set... the drives loose all their data. You can use superduper or a few other clone programs that are avail or you can:

1. Physically Install new drive
2. Put your Snow Leo DVD in
(OPTIONAL: if you want to speed the install up and or you plan to do other installs in the future, you can make an image of your SNOWLEO Dvd and restore it to a USB drive. you can follow Steps 1-4 here to restore it to your USB drive: http://lifehacker.com/5351485/how-to-build-a-hackintosh-with-snow-leopard-start- to-finish)
3. Reboot your mac with the C key held down
4. Boot into your SNOWLEO DVD (this takes time unless you have the USB stick)
5. After you get into the Install Screen, go up into the menu and open up disk utility
6. Format your new Disk (Mac OS Extended (Journaled) GUID)
7. Make an image of your old 500GB disk and put it on your 1TB disk using Disk Utility
8. You might want to reboot at this point and test your image (I would)
9. If your image is good, go back and boot back into the DVD or USB thumb drive if your lucky
10. Setup your new RAID in disk utility
11. Restore the image sitting on your 1TB to your new RAID array

Done...

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