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RAID 1, Disk Failure, Now What?

keysersoze

keysersoze

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 6, 2004
1,596
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Our File Server is a G4 MDD. It had two 80GB hard drives in a RAID 1 striped array. Yesterday one of the hard drives failed (made horrible clicking noises), and the G4 wouldn't boot. I removed the bad hard drive and now the G4 boots and works good as new, except it only has the 1 good drive in it. My question is...

I would like to put a new 80GB hard drive into the machine to take the place of the dead one. How do I get the RAID 1 array to re-create itself? Is it as simple as plugging in a new drive? Disk utility says a hard drive set is currently missing (obviously), but do I have to do anything special to make sure the new blank drive gets updated with everything on the working drive?

I'm asking because I don't want to screw this up. Any advice helpful. Thanks!
 
you dont mention which kind of RAID contolling process you have - ie, hardware or software.

Changes are good, however, which ever you're using, the rebuild *wont* be automatic (I dont know a thing about RAID on mac - it may be different). Good controllers or software does it this way to prevent tears caused by incorrect drive insertion.

I'd suggest that once the new drive is in, you look around for some form of RAID process and tell it to start rebuilding.

Of course, this would be a superb time to do a complete backup...

Keep posting your progress will you - am curious to follow what happens.

(storage is my business.. 8 years with or around EMC)
 
Greebazoid said:
Of course, this would be a superb time to do a complete backup...
Click to expand...

LOL!!! That's great advice :D :) . That's most certainly on the forefront of my things to do this morning.

Well, I can tell you that RAID1 was set up with Disk Utility. So that's software RAID. I will look at the options there to see if it has some kind of 'rebuild' option. Thanks for your input!
 
I've done this before on an xServe. I believe if you just install the drive, and format the drive then open disk utitlity and there should be an option to get it to rebuild. I remembe it being pretty easy to figure out.
 
Well, I've backed it all up. :)

I haven't installed the new HD yet, but Disk Utility doesn't seem to have any "rebuild" option. I am not sure if it should just appear, or what, after I install the new drive. I am terrified of putting the new HD in and having them synch such that the working drive with all of the data on it just gets zeroed out to match the new blank drive. I've done this on my iPod before, completely ruining my collection, so that's why I am wary (My Mac had nothing in its library, so when I plugged in my iPod to charge it, it tried to synch my library with zero files to my iPod with 500 songs, completely wiping everything out. So stupid of me, hence the trepidation.. would rather get it right the first time).
 
keysersoze said:
Thanks for the link-- I looked it over. It describes how to create a RAID set which is useful, but I already have the RAID set. I just want to be able to rebuild it. But thanks!
Click to expand...

yeah, i was thinking the part you may have to repeat is adding the new disk to the existing set...thats all ;)
 
kingjr3 said:
yeah, i was thinking the part you may have to repeat is adding the new disk to the existing set...thats all ;)
Click to expand...

Well, I finally did it... success!

Here's what happened:
I installed the second HD (both set on cable select). I booted from a Mac OS X disk because the mirrored drives had the OS installed on them. No biggie. So then opened disk utility and clicked on the RAID array, that said a piece was missing. Disk utility recognized the new drive, and I dragged it into the RAID array.

Momentary panic when the dialog box said "Adding this disk to your RAID set will destroy all its contents."

What the ****. "ITS contents?" Does "it" refer to the new disk, or to the RAID array? Someone at Apple should learn to use proper grammar and clearly define what "its" is. Anyway, after stewing, I said a small prayer and clicked on Rebuild button.

Success. It took about 45 minutes, but after that, I just rebooted from the HD and everything is as it was.
 
Greebazoid said:
Changes are good, however, which ever you're using, the rebuild *wont* be automatic
Click to expand...
That is not true. Many servers will autmaticlly rebuild I work with three servers at work, one of them is 4 years old running RAID 5, and 2 are a year old running RAID 1. All of them when you remove any hot swappable drive and insert a new one it rebuild immediately. Of coarse this is when its in the same drive bay. However, with the new servers we could switch to hard drives and everything would rebuild. So I could take any hard drive 1 from each from the new server and insert them in the other server and they would rebuild.
 
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