Concatenated Raid Help

[Mustard Chops]

Hey Guys, I have my itunes library on a 500Gb internal on my Mac Pro. I only have around 20Gb left on the drive so obviously I need to think about increasing my storage.

Can I create a concatenated RAID and add that drive to it without deleting the library?

ie purchase second 500GB drive set it up as a concatenated RAID then add my original Library drive to the RAID without losing everything?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Blogger]

Can't help thinking that a transfer to a larger hard drive would be a better idea.

 

[Mustard Chops]

yeah, larger drive was my first idea but at the rate my library is growing i'll fill a 750gb really fast - so i was hoping i could add the 750 or 500 to my existing 500 and get 1 - 1.25TB

 

[JesterJJZ]

Do you rip everything to aiffs or something?

 

[JesterJJZ]

yeah, larger drive was my first idea but at the rate my library is growing i'll fill a 750gb really fast - so i was hoping i could add the 750 or 500 to my existing 500 and get 1 - 1.25TB

Aren't 1TB drives out already?

 

[Mustard Chops]

Do you rip everything to aiffs or something?

My Music is around 80GB, I always rip @ 320kbps. I also have a lot of movies in my library for TV.

 

[Mustard Chops]

Aren't 1TB drives out already?

Yeah but they are pricey

 

[Trekkie]

I just bought 3 500GBs and made a 1.5TB array and use that instead of trying to expand the 500GB in the machine.

 

[suneohair]

My Music is around 80GB, I always rip @ 320kbps. I also have a lot of movies in my library for TV.

You should be doing lossless. You aren't gaining much in 320 MP3. Granted lossless is larger, they sound so good though.

 

[tyr2]

Yes you can convert an existing disk into a RAID set without erasing the contents. See the command line 'diskutil' man page. Specifically

     enableRAID mirror|concat device
                Convert single filesystem disk or volume into a unpaired mir-
                ror RAID set or concat set.  Ownership of the affected disk is
                required.

and then to add the new disk to the set

     addToRAID type newDisk raidDisk
                Add a slice or spare to an existing RAID set.  Type is one of
                'member' or 'spare'.  newDisk and raidDisk are only Device
                Nodes or Disk Identifiers.  Ownership of the affected disk is
                required.

I don't think there's any way to do this with Disk Utility, however I might have missed it. So you'll have to get familiar with diskutil.

Use 'diskutil list' to help identify the disk id's to use with the above commands.

If you're looking to do this with your boot disk then it's not so easy diskutil will need to unmount the disk whilst it turns it into a RAID set, so you'd have to boot of an alternate boot disk first.

Disclaimer: Make sure you have a back up, doing this could destroy your data.

 

[Mustard Chops]

Yes you can convert an existing disk into a RAID set without erasing the contents. See the command line 'diskutil' man page. Specifically

     enableRAID mirror|concat device
                Convert single filesystem disk or volume into a unpaired mir-
                ror RAID set or concat set.  Ownership of the affected disk is
                required.

and then to add the new disk to the set

     addToRAID type newDisk raidDisk
                Add a slice or spare to an existing RAID set.  Type is one of
                'member' or 'spare'.  newDisk and raidDisk are only Device
                Nodes or Disk Identifiers.  Ownership of the affected disk is
                required.

I don't think there's any way to do this with Disk Utility, however I might have missed it. So you'll have to get familiar with diskutil.

Use 'diskutil list' to help identify the disk id's to use with the above commands.

If you're looking to do this with your boot disk then it's not so easy diskutil will need to unmount the disk whilst it turns it into a RAID set, so you'd have to boot of an alternate boot disk first.

Disclaimer: Make sure you have a back up, doing this could destroy your data.

Awesome! thanks

 

[psingh01]

Definitely backup to a bunch of DVDs if you can first. It would be a drag if you lost it all. I bought a 1TB USB Hitachi drive and it is pretty good, though it cost around $400.