Concatenate Network drives

U

uplusd

macrumors 6502

Original poster

• Apr 24, 2008

• #1

Is it possible to create a concatenated RAID with two network drives so that all Macs in the household see them as one drive?

 

tersono

macrumors 68000

• Apr 24, 2008

• #2

You'll need to create the array on the machine to which the drives are directly connected. Once done and duly shared, the array will appear as a single volume to all machines, both local and network.

I run a couple of RAID 1 mirrors in an old G4 server in this way

 

U

uplusd

macrumors 6502

Original poster

• Apr 24, 2008

• #3

tersono said:

You'll need to create the array on the machine to which the drives are directly connected. Once done and duly shared, the array will appear as a single volume to all machines, both local and network.

I run a couple of RAID 1 mirrors in an old G4 server in this way

Click to expand...

What if I connect the drives to an AirPort extreme or a Linksys router with USB capability?

 

O

operator207

macrumors 6502

• Apr 24, 2008

• #4

They make raid USB external enclosures. It does the raiding of the drives, and from the other side of the USB cable, the computer just sees one big drive.

I believe you do use your computer at the beginning to raid them together though.

Here are two on NewEgg.

They already have drives in them, but you can buy them without drives, and supply your own. You want an Oxford chipset, NOT Prolific, they have sucked for me.

Also, do NOT use JBOD, if you lose one drive, you lose the data off the other drive.

 

U

uplusd

macrumors 6502

Original poster

• Apr 24, 2008

• #5

So anyone know if this is possible with airport extreme?

 

tersono

macrumors 68000

• Apr 24, 2008

• #6

mrurmil said:

So anyone know if this is possible with airport extreme?

Click to expand...

No, it isn't. To go RAID via AE you'd have to use a USB RAID enclosure as mentioned by the previous poster.

You could, of course, also go with a RAID NAS (network attached storage) box which just plugs into your network, but if you go that route, be careful - most of the NAS boxes out there aren't terribly Mac-friendly. You can access them from a Mac, but they impose a 31-character path/filename limit. There are a couple of RAID NAS implementations that are fully Mac-friendly (Synology and Drobo), but they're expensive.