Reformatting RAID 0

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Level 1

4 points

Reformatting RAID 0

We have two 1TB internal hard drives striped into a 2TB RAID-0 set. Currently, one of the 1TB drives is failing.

We have added a 3TB internal drive and transferred all our material to the new drive. Now we would like to see if we can recover use of one if not both of the 1TB drives.

Question: how do you reformat the RAID-0 set? Do we reformat the 2TB Media RAID-0 set or do we reformat the individual 1TB slices (currently one slice is greyed out and unavailable due to it's damaged condition).

Computer specs:

Mac Pro

2x 2.26 Ghz Quad-core Intel Xeon

OSX 10.8.5

Mac Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on Apr 7, 2015 2:02 PM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,259 points

Apr 7, 2015 2:06 PM in response to RedEyePost

You cannot format just a single drive, but you can reformat the entire RAID as you would any other volume. Select the array volume in Disk Utility and erase it. Do not do anything individually to the two separate drives.

However, if you believe one of the drives has failed, then just break the RAID altogether, remove the bad drive and reformat the remaining good one.

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Answer 2

RedEyePost Author

Level 1

4 points

Apr 7, 2015 2:38 PM in response to Kappy

Thanks so much for such a prompt response, Kappy!

When you say "break the RAID altogether", did you mean physically removing the bad drive and/or deleting it in disk utility. If you do both, do you delete it from disk utility 1st? And, do you delete the RAID-0 set first? Sorry, just being overtly cautious here. It seems one of the drives has indeed failed and I'm hoping to salvage the remaining one.

Thanks again!

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Answer 3

Kappy

Level 10

362,259 points

Apr 7, 2015 2:57 PM in response to RedEyePost

I mainly was referring to breaking the array in Disk Utility first, before separating the drives physically.

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