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Mac Mini Raid Server

eenu

eenu

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 11, 2006
1,157
0
Manchester, UK
I have a G4 Mini lying around and am thinking about buying an external enclosure to do Raid 1 and therefore using the Mini as a fileserver.

Can anyone in the UK recommend an enclosure and can anyone worldwide confirm they have done this and that it works ok.
 
eenu said:
I have a G4 Mini lying around and am thinking about buying an external enclosure to do Raid 1 and therefore using the Mini as a fileserver.

Can anyone in the UK recommend an enclosure and can anyone worldwide confirm they have done this and that it works ok.
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I didn't do it because my Mac mini is just my audio-mac its next to the tv enabled front row on it and that's it...

but regarding your Q: why didn't anyone reply? because you can do this as simple as you can do this with another mac (use the internal drive for the OS) and add 2 similar FW drives (wouldn't recommend USB2 since I've noticed FW400 being faster than USB2 probably because its speed is more concistent??) and software raid1 them with diskutil or buy a hardware raid setup that connects with FW to the mini like thos from LaCie and others

or buy 2 similar FW enclosures, buy 2 equal drives and build the softraid yourself...


pretty simple... right??
 
Jo-Kun said:
I didn't do it because my Mac mini is just my audio-mac its next to the tv enabled front row on it and that's it...

but regarding your Q: why didn't anyone reply? because you can do this as simple as you can do this with another mac (use the internal drive for the OS) and add 2 similar FW drives (wouldn't recommend USB2 since I've noticed FW400 being faster than USB2 probably because its speed is more concistent??) and software raid1 them with diskutil or buy a hardware raid setup that connects with FW to the mini like thos from LaCie and others

or buy 2 similar FW enclosures, buy 2 equal drives and build the softraid yourself...


pretty simple... right??
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Thanks for repeating exactly what i said in the original post!

iWoot, yes its for backup.
 
eenu said:
iWoot, yes its for backup.
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To be picky, raids are purely for increased redundancy (except raid0), not backup, unless you want redundancy for your backups.

And it's entirely possible to use the Mac mini in such a way, although personally I'd prefer to go with a different, more suitable machine or setup with a decent raid card, i'd hate to do a softraid (but my personal preference is raid5, and good hardware is almost a must then). my own fileserver has its own raid card and doesn't run osx, and it's a 3x250gb raid5.

a raid1 only needs a minimum of 2 drives. They can be differently-sized (i.e. 120gb and 160gb), but the larger drive's excess capacity will be ignored. If you use multiple drives, the size of the raid will correspond with the size of the smallest drive.

And lastly, I know you said UK, but if you're looking for hardware, this is what you should probably be looking for if you can afford the cash: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816111006
and not just daisychaining a couple of external drives together.

Edit: You mentioned only one enclosure in your original post, if you didn't mean an enclosure like the one i linked above and you really meant just a plain old hard drive enclosure for liek $40, I don't suggest using the mini's drive as part of the raid1, or any drive running the OS for the fileserver, as you may just well be in an unpleasant situation when the (soft)raid fails for any reason.
 
Pretty pointless to do a RAID 0 with a single Firewire 400 controller. Any nominal speed increase you would get would be negated by the overhead of Firewire and software RAID. If you want to use a large RAIDed storage setup, look for one of the dual-drive-with-hardware-RAID boxes from LaCie or Wiebetech or similar.

As far as doing RAID 1 on the Mini, Sure you could, but I agree with Janey's points, and you;d likely be better off just setting up a periodic backup with Superduper or something.
 
aswitcher said:
Wireless RAID for MacBook Pro.
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which would be better served in every possible way by a dedicated setup, instead of an adhoc softraid with the AX (if it was even possible, to begin with)
and really which raid would you do? wireless raid0 defeats the purpose of raid0...raid1 is..well, raid1...raid5 would burn and die...
I could see connecting a separate raid setup to the usb on the AX only if your entire setup consisted of laptops or not-always-on desktops.

most people don't need or even know what a raid is.
 
janey said:
which would be better served in every possible way by a dedicated setup, instead of an adhoc softraid with the AX (if it was even possible, to begin with)
and really which raid would you do? wireless raid0 defeats the purpose of raid0...raid1 is..well, raid1...raid5 would burn and die...
I could see connecting a separate raid setup to the usb on the AX only if your entire setup consisted of laptops or not-always-on desktops.

most people don't need or even know what a raid is.
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sure, well I do know what raids are - got the degree and all. And I have in mind a raid 1 so if one disks goes bad I should be right. I just want to know if its a go over the AX...and my follow up question will be can I wirelessly raid timemachine under Leopard so my MBP can be backed up each night without having to hardwire ;)
 
aswitcher said:
sure, well I do know what raids are - got the degree and all. And I have in mind a raid 1 so if one disks goes bad I should be right. I just want to know if its a go over the AX...and my follow up question will be can I wirelessly raid timemachine under Leopard so my MBP can be backed up each night without having to hardwire ;)
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Well no, if one disk dies, you have at least one other copy - but that is no guarantee of data integrity.

Frankly I have no idea why you'd want to do such a thing, but I suppose there's others who've thought the same, but I don't see why it can't be done (god, imagine how much time and space that would take).
 
janey said:
Well no, if one disk dies, you have at least one other copy - but that is no guarantee of data integrity.
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:O

Frankly I have no idea why you'd want to do such a thing, but I suppose there's others who've thought the same, but I don't see why it can't be done (god, imagine how much time and space that would take).
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I am surprised by your surprise. Well its like this. I plan to setup timemachine on an AX for my MBP for 3am updates. That and an iDisk should make sure I am pretty well covered BUT usb HDDs are pretty cheap these days, so a second making up a raid1 would reduce my risk again.
 
aswitcher said:
...so a second making up a raid1 would reduce my risk again...
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My point is that it doesn't matter how many copies of something you have, you are royally *****ed if the one backed up file you need is corrupted across every single copy you have.

I don't know how many times I'm saying this in this thread. RAID is for redundancy NOT integrity. It accounts for disk failure, but nothing else.

Like, for example, your RAID might be *****ed because your system crashed in the middle of a heavy write session to your software RAID. Sure, you'll have the same data on multiple drives - well, after resyncing drives and repairing the fs as needed, which only fixes what the RAID is there for. Which means you'll have a working array, just not with the data you were necessarily expecting. And this is the biggest reason why the OP shouldn't use the mini's internal drive as part of the raid1 he's interested in setting up - because if you don't have a machine you can repair an array with...woo boy.

And I'm not talking about raid1 the way you imply in your post, which is none of my concern, i'm talking about the raid1 over AX to backup your MBP with time machine idea that I'm frankly just..well, :confused:

Maybe this isnt clear, but what's the point of having what, 2, 10, 100 copies of a backup you can't do anything with?
 
janey said:
And I'm not talking about raid1 the way you imply in your post, which is none of my concern, i'm talking about the raid1 over AX to backup your MBP with time machine idea that I'm frankly just..well, :confused:

Maybe this isnt clear, but what's the point of having what, 2, 10, 100 copies of a backup you can't do anything with?
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;) Hey nice big writing. Yeah, like I said I do know what a raid is. I also hold out hope that timemachine will be smart enough to handle the integrity issues. And I agree, using the mini for raid aint a good move. But I was raising a new question revolving around the new AX - sorry if thats confused things. I'll seek my answers elsewhere.
 
aswitcher said:
;) Hey nice big writing. Yeah, like I said I do know what a raid is. I also hold out hope that timemachine will be smart enough to handle the integrity issues. And I agree, using the mini for raid aint a good move. But I was raising a new question revolving around the new AX - sorry if thats confused things. I'll seek my answers elsewhere.
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:eek: whoops

well, i had the idea you were using raid as some way to keep multiple copies of a backup and nothing more...
I mean if you wanted to do a raid and use the AX, you'd probably have to get a separate actual raid system because AX wouldnt have anything like a controller even software-wise. but i mean, pseudo-NAS...I would guess it would work.

as for time machine, i doubt it would be able to handle anything like that, but there's lots of ways to minimize any risks. but, considering the amount of size time machine would take up if you were doing a backup of your mbp every single night... i have a svn repository for my non-media files and it's pretty large now, each commit only adds a teeny bit to the size but it all adds up quite quickly...well that's a time machine gripe of mine in general, so..
 
janey said:
:eek: whoops

well, i had the idea you were using raid as some way to keep multiple copies of a backup and nothing more...
I mean if you wanted to do a raid and use the AX, you'd probably have to get a separate actual raid system because AX wouldnt have anything like a controller even software-wise. but i mean, pseudo-NAS...I would guess it would work.
Click to expand...

:) Maybe Leopard will have a few tricks to help with that. Else I might just use two drives and timemachine through the AX at different times (1am & 3am) as a way to cover myself without going to the software raid or expense of a true raid box. I think that should do it. That way I can also backup to different physical locations which will reduce my risk again since I will have two AXs.
 
I already have a dedicated Linux Server with Hardware Raid 1 of two 320GB Drives.

I just have a mini sat around and want to use it as a media server box (For when i get a macbook) but i would like to have redundancy since i have the hard drives lying around. Nothing wrong with having extra backups of my media which is already on my main server.

It's also going to double up as a print server. I was ideally looking for a 2 drive enclosure which has a hardware raid controller built in and that can accomplish Raid 1 and ideally has FW400 and or USB2 so i can connect it to the mini.

EDIT: My issue with NewEgg is the shipping costs and possible import tax into the UK
 
eenu said:
Do you not think if i could find one i wouldn't have posted! Jeez!

You are the fountain of all knowledge!

Sorry Pengu but thats 2 posts in which you have been extremely unhelpful!
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right. so, given that i live on "the other side of the world" in australia, is it just my brilliant intellect that allowed me to find these in all of 30 seconds using google:
http://www.allpcstuff.co.uk/?page=searchresults&brandid=183&categoryid=395
http://www.allmacshop.co.uk/?page=category&categoryid=253
http://www.ammicro.co.uk/products/wiebetech.htm
http://www.macheaven.co.uk/?page=category&categoryid=571

im an atheist but i do believe that if he were real, god would help those WHO HELP THEMESLVES. if you had taken but a few minutes im sure you could find MANY MORE suppliers of hardware raid systems in the UK. hell the Applestore sells an extensive number of third party hardware. Before you call someone "unhelpful" remember that you asked for INFORMATION, not someone to feed you and wipe your ass.
 
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