what RAID status is this?

Hi Matthias,

Your RAID has degraded and would appear to no longer be online. But first off, using an external Firewire drive is a very bad idea, the RAID WILL eventually become degraded after time because the two drives you are using cannot always be in sync.

I use a Level 1 RAID for my boot discs and both discs are a connected to the same SATA (Serial drive controller card) card and from time to time they become degraded and have to be rebuilt. A crash or little lag from one of the discs can cause the data to be inconsistent, therefore degrading the RAID and essentially taking it off line.

If you want an external copy of your internal disc you are better off using a cloning app such as "Carbon copy Cloner, or Super Duper". I say better off because rebuilding a level 1 RAID on Mac OS X involves using Terminal which is not for "mere mortals" like us, best left to people who speak native Terminal.

The best option you have, is to copy your data onto another disc (A third disc), and then destroy the RAID in Disc Util and start again. When you build a new Level 1 RAID, there is an options panel somewhere in Disc Util's RAID controls to automatically rebuild a mirror RAID. If you don't have a third disc available you will not easily be able to rebuild your RAID using Disc Util, you will have to use Terminal. Third party apps have better rebuild features but they cost money. I would recommend reformatting the Firewire disc, and then Cloning your Internal Disc on to the newly Formatted Firewire Disc, then format your Internal Disc, and then Clone your Data back to the Internal Disc.

But as I said earlier building a RAID using an internal and external Firewire disc is not a good idea.

I hope this is helpful.

All the best,

Anil.

G4 Dual 867 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Hi Matthias,

I have just seen this thread in the forum:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=584826&tstart=0

try what is suggested in the linked thread. The rebuild option wasn't available when I last looked at my RAID, it may be a recent feature Apple has added 10.4.7.

All the best,

Anil.

A RAID should really use equally matched drives and interface. We can't tell what you use, based on just "Mac OS X (10.4.7)" in your .sig but unless you are using FW800 with your internal drive, and nothing else on FW channel, or you have a FW800 PCI card... look at one question:

How much do you really need a mirror RAID and can you add PCI? FW800, or better yet, Serial ATA.

In order to get FW800 to work well, I had to invest in two FW800 cards so each drive was on its own channel, otherwise it was too slow.

And I'll put in a plug for SoftRAID 3 (3.5.1) which immediately alerts you on any unrecoverable I/O error and has more robust RAID. There is a demo.
http://www.softraid.com

Also download the Quick Start and User Manual there which are helpful.

RAIDs built in Tiger will not be accessible from Panther using Apple Disk Utility, too.

Hi Matthias,

You asked if you could trust the instant sync, my answer would be yes and no. The reason it was instant is because it was a directory issue and therefore not that much data relative to the amount of actual data you have on your RAID.

The reason I would say no is because your data is valuable to you, and as good as the free RAID tools Apple gives us they are not great for mission critical applications. Not great if you simply rely on using the Level 1 RAID because they can have problems and Disc Util doesn't warn you unless you check everyday manually to see if the RAID is OK. Basically RAID's are great, but they need housekeeping, so they are not the fit and forget solutions some people may think they are.

Also if you have a problems with a RAID it can be difficult to resolve, I say this from hard experience. As I mentioned in my previous post, if you are using an external Firewire Disc as part of your RAID, it will degrade sooner than two internal Discs.

Anyway I hope this helps, if it was my data I would clone it to the external disc, slightly more hassle but it can be automated, and that would give you a rock solid backup.

Anil.