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Migrating a RAID array to larger disks

M

monkeybagel

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 24, 2011
1,144
62
United States
Hi all,

I have a 5,1 that has three 2TB rotational drives running in RAID 0, and have pretty much exhausted that space, and it's time to upgrade the array to something larger. I am thinking of the best way to do this, and so far the best way seems to be to make a Disk Image on an external 1GbE drive (or USB as last resort) and compress the contents of the array to that image, swap out the disks and recreate the array and restore the contents. I don't have USB3 (yet) on this machine. Can anyone come up with a better more efficient/reliable solution?

Thanks
 
monkeybagel said:
Hi all,

I have a 5,1 that has three 2TB rotational drives running in RAID 0, and have pretty much exhausted that space, and it's time to upgrade the array to something larger. I am thinking of the best way to do this, and so far the best way seems to be to make a Disk Image on an external 1GbE drive (or USB as last resort) and compress the contents of the array to that image, swap out the disks and recreate the array and restore the contents. I don't have USB3 (yet) on this machine. Can anyone come up with a better more efficient/reliable solution?

Thanks
Click to expand...

First question:
  1. Is the data text, random documents - or photo and/or video data
    1. If text/random, be prepared for obscenely long compression times (although it helps a lot to get a multi-threaded compression utility).
    2. If photo or video, be prepared for obscenely long compression times and output files that are roughly the same size as the input files.
Second question:
Never mind, the first question covered it. Compression will not help you.​

If I were in this predicament, what I would do is:
Then, upgrade the array and copy the data back. Put the 8TB USB drive on the shelf for six months (or forever) - you have a full point-in-time backup.
[doublepost=1455932817][/doublepost]
AidenShaw said:
First question:
  1. Is the data text, random documents - or photo and/or video data
    1. If text/random, be prepared for obscenely long compression times (although it helps a lot to get a multi-threaded compression utility).
    2. If photo or video, be prepared for obscenely long compression times and output files that are roughly the same size as the input files.
Second question:
Never mind, the first question covered it. Compression will not help you. When I've used free stuff like gzip, it's single-threaded and a recent Xeon can compress at 10-20 MB/sec on the input. Without gzip, the copy runs 100 to 200 MB/sec.​

If I were in this predicament, what I would do is:
Then, upgrade the array and copy the data back. Put the 8TB USB drive on the shelf for six months (or forever) - you have a full point-in-time backup.
Click to expand...
 
I was just going to say buy a USB 3 card & 8TB disk but it's already been suggested. This is far & away the easiest way of achieving what you want. You don't mention what if anything you use currently for backup. If it's nothing then I suggest you get another 8TB disk & start doing backups.
 
Thanks for the reply. I was considering the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 8TB drives for the internal drives, and have a few 5TB drives USB3 setting around. I wanted to avoid dividing the data up onto different drives and copying it all back over. Most of the data is large vmdk files that do not need to be backed up. The data that does need to be backed up is going across 1GbE to a Time Machine backup. Thanks for the suggestions.

Any reservations on the Seagate drives?
[doublepost=1455937450][/doublepost]On a side note - it looks like Best Buy has them for the same price. Now to narrow down the right USB3 card...

Now the question is - with one 16x lane PCIe open, does that get a future SSD or the USB3 card and four SATA drives in the factory bays...

Decisions decisions!
 
KT4004 should be the right card on budget.

Anyway, you said that the array consist of 3 HDD, so the 4th bay is empty? Or for OS? If it's not for booting, it's very easy to put the 8T HDD in there and just clone everything to the new HDD.
 
h9826790 said:
KT4004 should be the right card on budget.

Anyway, you said that the array consist of 3 HDD, so the 4th bay is empty? Or for OS? If it's not for booting, it's very easy to put the 8T HDD in there and just clone everything to the new HDD.
Click to expand...

Bay 1 is an Apple (Samsung OEM) 512 SSD. Both optical bays are filled with SuperDrives. I would like to get a good USB3 card that can charge the current iPads efficiently and provide good data rates. I don't think I will have a need for eSATA. I have it on a few devices and it's never used. Would not mind having a USB3 RAID certified controller. I intend on keeping this computer for a while, hoping Apple doesn't prematurely drop OS X support early.

Stock it was a 12-core 3.06 with 512 SSD and 2TB rotational and an ATI 5870, and two LED Cinema Displays. I added two identical Hitachi 2TB drives, increased the RAM to 128GB, installed a GTX980Ti and that's about it. Will probably add a landscape 24" monitor to the setup soon, as well as the items listed (larger hard disks, USB3, etc.). I also have Windows 10 Enterprise booting GPT/EFI off of the SSD as well.
[doublepost=1455952100][/doublepost]
monkeybagel said:
Bay 1 is an Apple (Samsung OEM) 512 SSD. Both optical bays are filled with SuperDrives. I would like to get a good USB3 card that can charge the current iPads efficiently and provide good data rates. I don't think I will have a need for eSATA. I have it on a few devices and it's never used. Would not mind having a USB3 RAID certified controller. I intend on keeping this computer for a while, hoping Apple doesn't prematurely drop OS X support early.

Stock it was a 12-core 3.06 with 512 SSD and 2TB rotational and an ATI 5870, and two LED Cinema Displays. I added two identical Hitachi 2TB drives, increased the RAM to 128GB, installed a GTX980Ti and that's about it. Will probably add a landscape 24" monitor to the setup soon, as well as the items listed (larger hard disks, USB3, etc.). I also have Windows 10 Enterprise booting GPT/EFI off of the SSD as well.
Click to expand...

After thinking, I could install OS X on a USB Flash Drive and use that for creating the RAID and copying files.
 
monkeybagel said:
Bay 1 is an Apple (Samsung OEM) 512 SSD. Both optical bays are filled with SuperDrives. I would like to get a good USB3 card that can charge the current iPads efficiently and provide good data rates. I don't think I will have a need for eSATA. I have it on a few devices and it's never used. Would not mind having a USB3 RAID certified controller. I intend on keeping this computer for a while, hoping Apple doesn't prematurely drop OS X support early.

Stock it was a 12-core 3.06 with 512 SSD and 2TB rotational and an ATI 5870, and two LED Cinema Displays. I added two identical Hitachi 2TB drives, increased the RAM to 128GB, installed a GTX980Ti and that's about it. Will probably add a landscape 24" monitor to the setup soon, as well as the items listed (larger hard disks, USB3, etc.). I also have Windows 10 Enterprise booting GPT/EFI off of the SSD as well.
[doublepost=1455952100][/doublepost]

After thinking, I could install OS X on a USB Flash Drive and use that for creating the RAID and copying files.
Click to expand...

If you want to charge USB device as well, I think you need the Sonnet Allegro Pro USB 3.0 card, not many cards can give out 2.0A for charging device.
 
h9826790 said:
If you want to charge USB device as well, I think you need the Sonnet Allegro Pro USB 3.0 card, not many cards can give out 2.0A for charging device.
Click to expand...

Does the RAID capability advertised by some cause an impact in performance or capability if used with a RAID enclosure, or only with multiple single USB3 drives?
 
monkeybagel said:
Thanks for the reply. I was considering the Seagate Enterprise Capacity 8TB drives for the internal drives,...
Any reservations on the Seagate drives?
Click to expand...

The "Enterprise Capacity" drives look good from the Seagate Website.

I would not recommend the Seagate "Archive 8TB" for most uses. They are shingled drives, and don't have good performance for small random writes. They are great for archiving large files, or mostly read loads.
 
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