Lion Install FAILED: Mac Pro Raid 0?

[whyrichard]

Hey,

I have an '09 quad, with my bootdisk on a raid0 SSD setup. (one of the ssd's is in the 2nd cd tray).

When trying to install lion (should have known better...) I get the following message:

Install Failed
Mac OSX cannot be installed on your computer.

Mac OS X can't be installed on the disk XXXX because a recovery system can't be created. Visit apple.com to learn more.

Click restart to return to your previous version of Mac OS X...

I click restart and the exact same thing happens... loops.


WHAT DO I DO?
I have timemachine on an internal HDD.

How do I get Snow Leopard Back?
How do I install Lion?

Which should i do?

What is the easiest method?

thanks!
r.

 

[jenzjen]

IIRC, Lion can't be installed on RAID due to the recovery partition. Assuming you have a backup, you have to clean install Lion on 1 disk then figure out a way to get that onto a RAID. Just my 2c.

 

[Schismz]

Install on one drive (any drive), clone to RAID0 using something like Carbon Copy Cloner. Worked for me, also running dual SSDs in RAID0 for boot, 2010 dodeca-core cheesegrater.

It's still not fixed in 10.7.2? They at least got the RAIDs showing up correctly in diskutil, although verify is still broken from the GUI (and continues working just fine from *nix).

 

[DeeEss]

IIRC, Lion can't be installed on RAID due to the recovery partition. Assuming you have a backup, you have to clean install Lion on 1 disk then figure out a way to get that onto a RAID. Just my 2c.

Strange. Lion installed on my raid0 2xSSD (one in each optical drive bay) boot drive no problems. I just downloaded, installed and it was done. Running a-OK.

 

[whyrichard]

It was strange. I installed my sl cd thinking of abandoning efforts, Nd then for some reason it installed with a cd inserted just as if nothing happened.

Lion is alright, I miss normal spaces....

The disk utility bug is still present with raid drives, however.

R.

 

[DeeEss]

It was strange. I installed my sl cd thinking of abandoning efforts, Nd then for some reason it installed with a cd inserted just as if nothing happened.

Lion is alright, I miss normal spaces....

The disk utility bug is still present with raid drives, however.

R.

Good to hear you sorted it out. Out of Interest, what is the RAID bug you speak of?

 

[HawkEye40]

Hi guys,

I just installed the latest version of Lion on a RAID 0 volume. I downloaded it from the App Store, created a boot DVD and installed it without any issues, showed no warnings and also created the Recovery HD partition for me, on the RAID 0 setup (see attachment).

It was my understanding it couldn't create the Recovery HD partition but seems to be working fine...

 

[Chromedragon]

this is an interesting discussion. I have a pro that i'm running 4 drives in a mirrored strip set software based that started life as snow leopard. I upgraded from the app store back in august it gave me several warning during lion install but it did not stop the install. other than some interesting odd slow downs when moving large bits of data and no ability to create the recovery partition the machine has been fine.

Can anyone clarify if they are using the raid card or this is all software. I am still contemplating breaking up the mirror and stripes and going to a single disk install with a dedicated backup disk and some storage but if i can get clarification around if the apple raid card helps to solve some of these issues i may look at investing in the card to maintain some of the raid options.

Thanks in advance for your help.

my config is a early 2009 8core 2.26 26 gigs mem, gt 120, 4 Hitachi 1tb drives. lion 10.7.2 and change.

 

[Schismz]

We're talking about RAID0 using software install, in particular Apple's built-in RAID.

My personal-use box is a Mac Pro 2010, 12-Core, 48GB RAM, dual 240GB 6G OWC SSDs in RAID0 for boot, 4*3TB Hitachi's for data. + RAID5 backup, Time Machine, multiple clones, NAS, etc, etc, etc.

In theory the dual SSDs almost saturate the entire ICH/bandwidth, but in reality either the boot or data stripe is usually in use, and it works out very nicely for large capacity of data storage + very fast boot with no latency (no moving drive heads) for the SSDs and launching apps, or in particular: finding millions of very small spotlight files. The four mechanical HDDs provide extremely fast (550MB/sec - 650MB/sec) access to larger media files. The only thing faster would be 3 SSDs in RAID0 stripe, but I prefer using that internal bay for the 4-drive HDD stripe where a 4th disk actually makes a significant speed difference (5 HDDs do not, 4 very fast HDDs are near maxing the ICH).

I would not get the Apple RAID card, I lack the time to rant about how much it sucks in comparison to nearly everything else at the moment, but I'm sure somebody would be happy to chime in. The Apple RAID card is not a worthwhile investment.

What we're talking about in particular is Lion's Disk Utility.app which has been broken since 10.7, and parts remain broken in 10.7.2. diskutil from *nix works just fine.

For instance: try to verify your RAID from Disk Utility.app. It won't do anything, and it's just being retarded because Disk Utility.app isn't anything except for a GUI for diskutil. Open a shell and:

diskutil list (list devices/volumes), followed by:
diskutil verifyVolume /dev/disk<disk #>

and it works as expected.

10.7.2 did finally fix displaying RAID volumes correctly at least.

The Lion installer = your milage may vary, some have had problems (including me with 10.7), others have had no issues. I personally did a clean install to a single disk & then cloned that to RAID0. Trying to install to RAID0 did not work for me with 10.7. I do clean installs with every major point.release OS upgrade anyway + then migrate data (don't want cruft from 3 OS's ago banging around in my filesystem).

 

[nanofrog]

Can anyone clarify if they are using the raid card or this is all software. I am still contemplating breaking up the mirror and stripes and going to a single disk install with a dedicated backup disk and some storage but if i can get clarification around if the apple raid card helps to solve some of these issues i may look at investing in the card to maintain some of the raid options.

There are members running hardware and software based RAID systems. But those responding in this thread are stating software based implementations.

But determining what you need is based on what you're doing. More information (software used, how you use it, throughput requirements, current capacity requirement, capacity growth rate, and budget would be helpful).

As per the Apple RAID Card, avoid it like the proverbial plague if it turns out you really do need a hardware based solution... it's really that bad.

I would not get the Apple RAID card, I lack the time to rant about how much it sucks in comparison to nearly everything else at the moment, but I'm sure somebody would be happy to chime in. The Apple RAID card is not a worthwhile investment.

I absolutely agree. It's total crap for a hardware RAID card.

 

[Chromedragon]

Thank you for the prompt replies. I will avoid the card. The only real reason i was considering it was that it is showing up as a cheap purchase these days at mac of all trades. but i Think i will make a couple of solid backups then rebuild the box and then restore the data i need. Again thanks