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Itunes Library 500GB Mirror Degarded, safe backup to 750 GB external?

G

Greenjeens

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 25, 2005
158
0
California
Hi all,

I have 384 GB of iTunes music song files on 2 500GB internal SATA hard drives. One Seagate and another Maxtor. Both Sata 16 mb ram and similar types. The RAID was set up with Apple disc utility. I went to look at the drive status and found that the Seagate mirror was listed as "degraded" and the Maxtor drive was listed as "missing" or Partition missing". I have Smart Reporter monitoring the drive status, yet it says everything is fine. After much research, Maxtor drives appear to fall out of synch often and give invalid or degraded status quite often. There are many reports but not a lot of solutions.

I cannot lose my 384 GB of Itunes Apple Lossless music, so I decided to backup my music files to a new external 750 GB Seagate Free agent pro, ESATA/USB connector. I used the USB connector and the Backup Application "Super Duper". I erased and formated the new Seagate 750, deselecting OS 9 which won't be needed.

After 15 hours I only had 40 GB on my Seagate 750. I can't afford to have my computer tied up for approximately 6 days to download music. My math may be slightly off, but it's multiple days using the USB connector from my G4 400.

My question is can I safely disconnect the "missing partition" Maxtor from the degraded mirror set? Both internal 500 drives are connected with a dual Macsense SATA PCI card.
http://www.macsense.com/product/storage/sua-100e.html
http://www.amazon.com/Sata-Combo-Drivers-SATA1PT-Ultra/dp/B000ANOXBE

Then, can I use the SATA port on the free SATA connector to connect to the new Seagate external eSATA connection and get a faster transfer rate for my song files? Or at least safely try to get a faster sata rate?

I think I was getting 7.4 mb per second transfer rate from the internal mirror to the 750 external over a USB connection, or was that .74mb, sorry lost the decimal?

Any other ideas on how to transfer my itunes data safely or more quickly with what I have or other transfer software/

I'm stuck here, and could use some help or reassurance that disconnecting the degraded mirror and then using the SATA channel that had been connected to one of the mirror drives, will be OK to try, to get a faster transfer.

Is there any additional info needed to help make a recomendation?

-
Thanks,
Greenjeens
 
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Why didn't you just drag and drop your iTunes Library across the drives? As long as you effectively keep ~/Music/iTunes and everything under it you're just fine.
 
D0ct0rteeth said:
Don't jump on the guys case. kalisphoenix was right.

Anyway yes, Just drag the entire documents/music folder over. Thats all you'll need.
Click to expand...
Could still mean a USB 2.0 card.

Waiting for the OP now...

In my experience Super Duper and CCC are painfully slow compared to even Finder or making a disc image. (I deploy Macs.)
 
Eidorian said:
That's amazing if they're using USB 1.1. I have 2.0 cards in all my Power Mac G4s. Then again they sometimes have trouble going to sleep.
Click to expand...

I was amazed to reread the original post and find that another Mac was not mentioned at any point :p
 
Eidorian said:
Could still mean a USB 2.0 card.

Waiting for the OP now...

In my experience Super Duper and CCC are painfully slow compared to even Finder or making a disc image. (I deploy Macs.)
Click to expand...



Thanks guys, just got in. Here's the drives info for the G4 and the new 750 Seagate. That's USB 2.0, but it's transfering really slow as set up through Super Duper.

___________________________
Vendor Name: Apple Computer, Inc.
Product ID: 32773 ($8005)
Speed: Up to 12 Mb/sec
Bus Power (mA): 500

FreeAgent Pro:

Capacity: 698.64 GB
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: Yes
BSD Name: disk5
OS9 Drivers: No
Product ID: 12304 ($3010)
Vendor Name: Seagate
Speed: Up to 12 Mb/sec
_________________________________

So, the recomendation is to drag all the files, actually the " itunes Music" folder from the Mirror drive, even though apparently, only one of the drives is working, onto the new external USB 750GB drive. Makes sense, but the data is still going from the SATA drive/connection out the USB port connector to the new HD.

I can remember making very rapid music DATA transfers doing something like this, where a whole DVD would get burned as a data disc in a few minutes.
So forget the Super Duper App?
Can I get more speed with disconnecting the already "broken mirror" Maxtor drive and then using the feed SATA port on my G4 and the eSATA port on the 750 GB Seagate external drive or should I try to see the transfer rates when I simply drop the Itunes folder onto the new 750 GB HD?

Here's the Disc Utility RAID info for the "broken mirrior" Maxtor SATA drive.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disk Description : Maxtor 7H500F0 Total Capacity : 465.8 GB (500,107,862,016 Bytes)
Connection Bus : ATA
Connection Type : Internal
Connection ID : Device 1
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Here's the still working seagate 500 SATA (I assume) part of the mirror.

===========================================
Disk Description : ST3500641AS Total Capacity : 465.8 GB (500,107,862,016 Bytes)
Connection Bus : ATA Set Name : itunes Mirror Drives
Connection Type : Internal RAID Status : Degraded
Connection ID : Device 0
===========================================

I guess I'll erase and reformat and drop the itunes file onto the 750 HD unless I can come up with more info on disconnecting the SATA mirror set and using that SATA port (the only one available) to connect the 750 HD?
I could test it for awhile and see how fast it's going, with jus the drop the itunes file to the new drive method?

Thanks very much.
Greenjeens
 
Eidorian said:
You're using USB 1.1 to transfer the files. I suggest using a faster connection.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the drag and drop advice. Worked PERFECTLY! I'm happily embarassed that it was so easy. I love my Mac, be it ever so humble (and slow:)

I was just extremely paranoid about leaving all my music files "at risk", where a dumb mistake could have been a disaster.

Pretty sure all my USB ports are 2.0, but that slow speed using Super Duper means something is not right?

So, hooked up a different USB path from the SATA drive instead of the using the OEM USB ports. Used a USB port on a recently added PCI card.
Then just dragged the folder over from the good drive to the new external 750 Seagate and waited. Took ~9 hours to transfer 340 GB. That's much better than 6 days!

Now I feel much more comfortable, trying to figure out how to convert the degraded mirrored 500 SATA pair of drives into just one single working drive or perhaps reactivating the mirror?
At least I fufilled the first requirement to restoring the RAID set up...backing everything up!

After I review how Itunes works, and back up any other XML/ playlists, artwork and a large lyrics database...wherever that is, I might begin attempting to follow the restore process for the Mirror RAID drive set up.

Mirroring drives and then watching them fall apart (Maxtor drives seem prone to this behavior while searching), while the Smart Reporter HD monitor shows zero faults, has left me feeling disenchanted with RAID as the safe back up I had hoped for:(

Better to learn the lesson this way, compared to a catastrophic data loss!
Perhaps the safest storage is to purchase a 100 pack of DVD's then back up incrementaly to disc, at least that was the advice given by a more experienced media collector.
I have 22 discs from an itunes back up at about 90~100GB, but liked the flexibility, speed and ease of using multiple HDs, especially since the price of storage has dropped so much in the last few years.

*Here's the Apple Troubleshooting guide, steps to restore a degraded RAID, which applies perfectly.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106987

"Mac OS X: How to rebuild a software RAID mirror"
"Occasionally, Disk Utility may report that a software mirror has become degraded and that it must be rebuilt. In such a situation, one drive has become out of sync with another. To rebuild the software mirror, follow these steps below.
Warning: Before proceeding, you must back up of all data, because failure to follow the steps correctly may result in data loss.... "

-
greenjeens
 
Pretty sure all my USB ports are 2.0, but that slow speed using Super Duper means something is not right?
Click to expand...
Super Duper takes more then an hour to clone a 22 GB drive for me. Then again there are many more system files then music.

Pretty sure all my USB ports are 2.0, but that slow speed using Super Duper means something is not right?

So, hooked up a different USB path from the SATA drive instead of the using the OEM USB ports. Used a USB port on a recently added PCI card.
Click to expand...
No Power Mac G4 ever came with USB 2.0 ports. It's another thing if you installed a USB 2.0 PCI card.
 
Ive not used apple software to raid but typically i would add another disk into the raid1 array and let it rebuild to restore redundancy.

Is that not a option?
 
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