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Temporarily Removing RAID Harddrives

K

kimberlysd

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 24, 2010
7
0
I have a Mac Pro with all hard drive slots filled. The first two disks (includes startup disk) are independent, and 3 and 4 are set up in a RAID 1 mirror. I have to take my computer into the Apple store for a repair and I'd like to just take out all the disks except for my startup disk... however I'm not sure how to go about doing so for the RAID. If I take the drives out, and boot up the computer with them no longer inside, will the computer "freak out" and/or will the computer no longer recognize the RAID if I put them back in again later?

If the latter is the case, will the data be lost or would I just have to set up the RAID again... and if I do that, will that also cause the data on the drives to be lost, or is it possible for it to mirror them again without needing to make changes to the data?
 
N

ncc1701d

macrumors 6502
Mar 30, 2008
436
70
There will be others here with a more solid answer, but:

I believe you should be able to just slide out the two raided drives no problems. Provided they go back in the same slots, there shouldn't be a problem. Depending on what the repair people are going to be doing, you shouldn't have to reconfigure anything and no data will be lost. I'm not going to give you a warranty on that! but the machines are designed for that sort of thing.

Which MP have you got?
 
N

nanofrog

macrumors G4
May 6, 2008
11,719
3
The data will remain if you pull the disks. But it's best to make a fresh backup prior anyway, just in case the repairs made cause changes to the system firmware.

But you should be able to leave them in anyway (less chance of the Genius from making a change that might delete the array), as you will get alert notices once the disks for the mirror are pulled. If such a change does occur, you'd have to re-create the set, and the initialization process will wipe any data. Then you restore the data from the backup (which is why you take that particular precaution).

The behavior is much more predictable in such cases (less chance of data loss), by using a true hardware RAID controller (array settings are in the card's firmware, not system firmware, or solely on the boot sectors).
 
K

kimberlysd

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 24, 2010
7
0
Thanks! It sounds like the best course either way is to make a backup regardless.
 
N

nanofrog

macrumors G4
May 6, 2008
11,719
3
kimberlysd said:
Thanks! It sounds like the best course either way is to make a backup regardless.
Click to expand...
Absolutely. :D

Always make the backup prior to any modifications/changes to an array. Even with a hardware controller for the "just in case" something goes wrong.
 
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