RAID0 moving to SSD + RAID0

[Mac Husky]

I am now ready to setup the new SSD (Crucial M4 128). Cleaned the RAID0 by putting all my data on another HDD. Made a system backup of the RAID0 on an other HDD sitting in then optical bay.

Tried to start from the backup system, but it was kind of very slow Is that due to the location in the optical bay of the Mac Pro?

Wanted to clone RADI0 by block copy to the SSD by booting from the HDD in the optical bay. Now I fear, that it won´t work well due to slow performace of it.

All the other bays are used (SSD and RAID0 of 3 HDDs).

Could I make a block copy using a root user on RAID0, also?!
Or would you try as planned before?!

Suggestions?!

 

[funkahdafi]

I would just use CarbonCopyCloner. It get's the job done in no time and without problems.

 

[Mac Husky]

No question. Would do that, also.

BUT: I wan´t to (or have to) do a block copy from the RAID0 on the SSD when I understood everything right?! And for that I planned to start from the fifth HDD in the optical bay so far. But system runs strange slow from it.

So my question was, whether I could to that from the RAID0 also using a root user account?!

 

[funkahdafi]

No question. Would do that, also.

BUT: I wan´t to (or have to) do a block copy from the RAID0 on the SSD when I understood everything right?! And for that I planned to start from the fifth HDD in the optical bay so far. But system runs strange slow from it.

So my question was, whether I could to that from the RAID0 also using a root user account?!

Huh? Who says you need to do ablock copy? What for?

Just copy the RAID0 volume from your old array over to the new RAID0 SSD array with CCC. That's it.

 

[Mac Husky]

Who says you need to do a block copy?

Uuups, I thought one should do that, when copying a bootable HDD to an other HDD or SSD? You wouldn´t? Just copy the RAID0 while the system on it is running?

You seem to be wright - just found this:

A block-level copy is faster for an initial backup. If your destination volume already has a lot of the source volume's content (i.e. from a previous backup), a file-level update will actually be faster than a block-level copy. As far as the end result is concerned, the two methods are equal. Both methods can produce a bootable backup of Mac OS X.

I thought a block copy would be necessary for producing a secure bootable drive.

Wrong assumption obviously.

 

[funkahdafi]

No, it's not necessary at all. In fact, you can restore your bootdrive from Time Machine - which isnt's block based.

By the way: CCC will do a block based clone for you automatically if it is possible (e.g. you booted from another disk so the raid volume being cloned is not in use).

Either way - it's very straight forward and easy, block based or not. It's also pretty fast. Last time I did it my clone took half an hour (roughly 200 GB boot drive).

Good luck.

 

[Mac Husky]

Thx. I will do that tonight or tomorrow.
Have to format the SSD before and upgrade firmware to 0309.

Only about 70GBs here for system and apps.

 

[Mac Husky]

Did it and worked out well. Thx all.

No problems initializing an formatting the SSD and upgrading the firmware.
Copy process was only about 36 minutes.

First start from SSD without any problems.

SSD booting procedure took about 30 seconds - instead of 51 seconds from RAID0
to the desktop for user selection. Thought, that should be kind of faster? Is that
due to SATA2 or would you say it is to slow at all?!

 

[deconstruct60]

Thanks a lot.

Another problem: Lion did not create the recover partition on the RAID0 at all.

It isn't going to.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4649

The core design issue is that the recovery partition needs to boot when there is a "problem". With data striped over multiple disks, it doesn't really make alot of sense to put the recovery partition on multiple disks when the disks are a possible source of the problem. ( on one internal disk is risky enough). [ RAID 1 you'd have redundant recovery partitions which , while not risky, is confusing both in usage and in updates if the drives get unsynched. ] Furthermore, the recovery partition must be kept small as possible (which can mean dropping the software RAID code to make the partition smaller. ).


For RAID 0/1/etc. you need an external recovery drive. (there is a pointer to the utility in the above KB article.

RAID removes a couple of things ( recovery partition , disk encryption, etc.).

 

[Mac Husky]

Finally I wan´t to separate the HDDs of the software RAID into three single HDDs. Data has been backuped on an other HDD.

How to do that?

 

[alphaod]

I used to use Time Machine, but now I clone with CCC.

Very easy to clone everything from the old drive to the new drive.

As for a recovery partition, I actually have the Lion installer on a USB drive (from the Apple Store…)