Mac mini server with Mountain Lion and Promise Pegasus R2 harddrives
Hi, we have a Mac Mini server with Mountain Lion. The MacMini with accompanying external harddrives is configured as a file server and as a time machine server. We use Promise Pegasus storage units. These units consist of 6 * 2TB harddrives in a RAID5 setup. 2TB is wasted in the RAID5, so each unit has an effective capacity of 10TB.
Earlier we have had 1 Pegasus RAID Storage with Thunderbolt connected to the MacMini, and it has worked fairly well. Now we have purchased two new Promise Pegasus2 units, and connected these two as well to the MacMini. So now there are 3 Pegasus units in a thunderbolt daisychain.
Problem: copy jobs from the first Pegasus to any of the two new ones fail, and also make the system hang so that it needs to reboot.
When the copy job fails, a red led at one of the disks at the unit that is writing shows, indicating a failed drive. At the same time the activity led blinks, indicating that the same disk is spinning. The other disks show no red lights, and no spinning activity. So this inidicates a failed drive. The power-led on the unit that fails goes orange. However, on reboot the system shows no red or orange leds, and I am able to initate a new copy job. Which again will fail after 30 minutes or so. The disk that goes red varies, it is not the same one each time. And both new units has displayed this behavior (depending on which one is written to).
I have a copy script that copies several large directories, and the crash comes at varying stages in this script, indicating that the script itself is ok - once it even ran to completion. However - such an unstable system is not useful for us.
In the copy script I do:
cp -pPRX ...
without the X it does not work at all. So a problem with the Pegasus file system? It says Mac OS Extended (Journaled) on all drives - so it should be the same...
Any experiences of thoughts?
Mac mini, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)