First try at a raid and CCC and have an issue?

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Level 1

5 points

First try at a raid and CCC and have an issue?

I recently bought 2 new 4tb seagate drives and an OWC elite pro dual inclosure with esata connections to back up my media files. For the last few years I've used a single drive for my media files and I've backed up that single drive with other single drives via CCC with no issues. I've had succes setting up the new stripped raid with the 2 4tb drives to create 1 8tb volume. However numerous tries to clone my single media drive to the raid using CCC have failed. The raid will unmount after 6 hours sometimes longer. Sometimes CCC will say there were problems with files. Today I reformated the raid back to 2 individual drives. I tried clonning my media drive to just one of the new drives in the new enclosure and it worked fine. I'm running the current version of mountain lion 10.8.4. So it seems to me that there seems to be an issue with the raid I'm setting up and mountain lion or maybe CCC. Anybody have any clue as to what's going on here? My next step is to try the 2 new drives in 2 of my mac pro's internal bays.....set up a raid again and try clonning that way. I was hoping to check in here first to see if someone knows what the issue may be first.

Thanks

Dave

Posted on Jul 24, 2013 7:12 PM

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Answer 1

Meg The Dog

Level 6

13,561 points

Jul 24, 2013 7:27 PM in response to Dave Turner3

How are you connecting the OWC eSata enclosure to your Mac? Are you using a PCIe eSatat Card? Which one?

Do you have other eSata devices on the same card?

MtD

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Answer 2

Dave Turner3 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 24, 2013 7:58 PM in response to Meg The Dog

Yes I am connecting the bay via esata to a OWC mercury accelsior_e2 PCI express ssd card.

http://ftp.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury_Accelsior/RAID

No other esata connections. Each drive as an individual connection to the card. Also this card is only a few months old. This is the first time I've had any thing connected to the esata ports.

Any help is appreciated!

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Answer 3

nbar

Level 5

7,019 points

Jul 24, 2013 8:38 PM in response to Dave Turner3

OWC elite pro dual inclosure with esata connections to back up my media file

The enclosure is dual port correct?

Your card is not compatible with port-multiplier enclosures, which is why I ask.

Message was edited by: nbar Nevermind, apologies: "Each drive as an individual connection to the card"

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Answer 4

Dave Turner3 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 24, 2013 8:44 PM in response to nbar

Yes the the dual drive enclosure has 2 esata ports.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/esata/Elite-AL_Pro-RAID_Ready_Dual-Drive

The mercury accelsior_e2 PCI express ssd has 2 esata ports also. I can see and format both individual drives.

I can even format them into a stripped raid via disk utility. The problem occures when I try to clone a 3tb drive full of media files to the enclosure when it has been formated into a stripped raid. It will fail to clone usually because it unmounts at some point during the cloning process.

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Answer 5

Dave Turner3 Author

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5 points

Jul 24, 2013 8:47 PM in response to Dave Turner3

I should also point out I have all energy saver options off. The mac pro does not go to sleep and the drives are not set to spin down. The dual enclosure and mercury accelsior card seem to play together fine until I try and copy a large amount of data to it while it's confirgured in a stripped raid format.

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Answer 6

nbar

Level 5

7,019 points

Jul 24, 2013 8:51 PM in response to Dave Turner3

Have you downloaded the driver as well? You do indicate all energy saver options are off, but this wouldn't hurt.

Accelsior_E2 Driver
for OS X 10.6.8 & Later, Mac Pro only

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Answer 7

Dave Turner3 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 24, 2013 8:57 PM in response to Dave Turner3

I have not downloaded that. I will check in with OWC tomorrow to see if they suggest it. I appreciate the link.

I'm really hoping to narrow this down to either a software or hardware issue.

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Answer 8

nbar

Level 5

7,019 points

Jul 24, 2013 9:15 PM in response to Dave Turner3

Are these system files? If so, which? Do you have a log at the time of the hang?

Sometimes CCC will say there were problems with files

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Answer 9

Dave Turner3 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 24, 2013 9:20 PM in response to nbar

No system files....all are media files 3 tbs of RAW camera files and a lightroom catalog file. I just cloned all the files today to one of the individual drives in the enclosure and everything went fine. The problems only happen when the drives are formated in a stripped raid volume.

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Answer 10

nbar

Level 5

7,019 points

Jul 24, 2013 9:48 PM in response to Dave Turner3

This could be many things, doubtful it is hardware in itself as much as compatibility since each drive functions perfectly fine before the RAID. I would definitely download that driver. You mention energy saver preferences are off (ie unchecking 'Put hard disk to Sleep when Possible'), but keep in mind these preferences only apply to your bootable volume. The driver specifically addresses this issue.

Also, just reading up online and in the forums, ML may be buggy when it comes to 2TB+ volumes (though in theory OSX could support 8EB of HFS+ formatted arrays!). Another option would be to purchase a program that would substitute for OSX native Disk Utility in handling large sized RAIDs:

"Apple’s Disk Utility can be quite flaky with RAID and partitioning. It can crash and do other confusing things; you might have to repartition and/or delete volumes to restore drives to a basic state. For me however, it has never done anything bad to drives/volumes that it wasn’t already asked to operate on. I do not recommend Disk Utility for more complex RAID setups due to its bugs. Consider SoftRAID instead. "

Download the driver first! Best of Luck.

RAID striping and mirroring - Macintosh Performance Guide

Is Mountain Lion mishandling large drives? | MacFixIt - CNET Reviews

"OS X: Mac OS Extended format (HFS Plus) volume and file limits"

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Answer 11

Dave Turner3 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 24, 2013 9:55 PM in response to nbar

Thanks nbar I really do appreciate the help!

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Answer 12

Aug 19, 2013 9:43 AM in response to Dave Turner3

You should get an error message in console. It might also be useful to report the results from 'sudo dmesg' and see if there are relevant kernel messages. Have you discussed this behavior with OWC support?

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