Need help with RAID setup and time machine

[kteboyle]

Hey guys and gals,
I am new to the Mac world and new to RAID as well. I've got some questions about what I've done, where I am going, and what would be best practice.

First, I bought a new mac mini 2011, with the stock 500GB drive and added a 2nd 500gb drive for its reliability, heat, noise, and 9.5mm depth. I added these successively and moved files on to them successively without RAIDing them internally. So I have about 400GB of files on my boot drive, and 200GB of files on the secondary drive, which are not RAIDed. I partitioned off 15GB from the secondary to serve as a secondary boot drive (i think this will work, but I still haven't figured out the logistics here).

I connected two external 500GB drives via USB, and created a 15GB boot drive backup partition on one of the drives. I tried to turn on time capsule, but it couldn't back up the 600+ GB to two separate harddrives. So I set up a concatenated RAID of the 985GB remaining and turned on time capsule. Seems to be going well this morning.

So now my setup looks like two separate internal drives backing up to one large RAIDed harddrive.

Eventually, I plan to upgrade the internal harddrives to 2x1TB drives or a SSD and 1-1.5TB HDD, at which point I would like to migrate all the files and OS from the current 2 internal drives to a new internal drive. I recognize that I will have to get a new external backup drive as well, which will have RAID 4-6, and run either via thunderbolt or wireless NAS.

Here are my questions:

1. Can I raid my internal drives without erasing what is currently on them? And should I do it knowing that I will be looking to replace them with one drive in the future?
2. Is it possible to direct my 15GB internal boot drive to back up to the 15GB external boot drive via time capsule? Or does this have to be done by manually copying files?
3. Is it okay to continue with two separate internal drives backing up to one virtual external drive?
4. How do I restore to a new harddrive when the time comes to upgrade the internal and external harddrives? Can I take out both internal harddrives, put in two new harddrives and do a restore from the external drives? Do I need to do from internal drives, one at a time?
5. Do I need to DL that new lion recovery software? What will this do for me? Can I DL this and put it on the internal and external boot drives (15GB partitions)?
   
   Thank you for all your help,
   
   Kevin

 

[kteboyle]

I see some instructions here for using time machine:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427

Does upgrading the internal harddrive constitute "If you are restoring a backup made by a Mac to the same Mac" or "Restoring a Time Machine backup on a new Mac".

Then I see a section for upgrading just the backup drives: "Mac OS X v10.6: How to transfer your backups from your current hard drive to a new hard drive"

 

[KScottMyers]

Here are my questions:

1. Can I raid my internal drives without erasing what is currently on them? And should I do it knowing that I will be looking to replace them with one drive in the future?
2. Is it possible to direct my 15GB internal boot drive to back up to the 15GB external boot drive via time capsule? Or does this have to be done by manually copying files?
3. Is it okay to continue with two separate internal drives backing up to one virtual external drive?
4. How do I restore to a new harddrive when the time comes to upgrade the internal and external harddrives? Can I take out both internal harddrives, put in two new harddrives and do a restore from the external drives? Do I need to do from internal drives, one at a time?
5. Do I need to DL that new lion recovery software? What will this do for me? Can I DL this and put it on the internal and external boot drives (15GB partitions)?

1. If you mean RAID 0 - no, it will erase all the data.
2. Not sure why you have a 15GB boot drive - a USB hard drive or 16 GB thumb drive might be more convenient. You do know you can boot into recovery mode by holding down Command+R at start up?
3. Yes
4. Use a cloning tool like Carbon Copy Cloner.
5. You can, but the new mini allows you to boot into recover mode from the EFI. Use Command+R at start up.

 

[indg]

just want to note that a concatenated jbod array is not the same as a striped raid (raid 0).

setting up raid erases everything. this is what you could do:
1. set up raid first.
2. restore lion (if you cloned the lion partition to an external drive before setting up raid) or reinstall lion to the raid set via internet recovery.
3. use migration assistant to restore your apps/data/settings from previous mac or time machine.

i don't know what you need the 15gb boot partition for.