bofors Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 I have now got OS X software RAID working on my box. The only problem is that OSx86 10.4.5 will not boot of it as is. There are a couple different ways to do this. Basically you needed either a Mac tower or some external storage device to set up the RAID drives. I used my G5. Simply move the internal RAID drives into the external box and then connect to them via USB or FireWire (use Target Disk Mode for a Mac tower). When paritioning disks select "Mac Paritioning Scheme" by pressing the "Options" button (the default for external drives is "PC Partitioning Scheme" which does not support OS X's software RAID). Then the should be draggable into the RAID table view and set can be created. Alternatively, the same results can be achieved by formatting and setting up RAID in a PPC Mac tower. Once the RAID drives are set up, just move back into the OSx86. The only problem is that that the drives are not bootable. Note that I worked with 10.4.3 and 10.4.5 rather thoroughly. Because of Apple's switch to EFI with 10.4.4, the 10.4.3 Disk Utility may be better for working with BIOS systems. In addition, to the "Mac" and "PC" partitions schemes, it also has a "GUID Parition Scheme" option that creates 200 MB of free at the front of the drive. My conclusion is that the BIOS bootloader does not recognize the resulting partition scheme. StickyDigits perviously reported that he had found another way to set up RAID by using an IDE drive and 10.4.3: I managed to get RAID 0 working using my 2 SATA drives. After trying to set up the RAID using 10.4.3 - 10.4.5 off the CD install (which never worked, I can't seem to be able to drag the drives to the RAID window during the initial setup routine) I decided to take an other approach. I setup 10.4.3 and an old IDE drive I had on hand. After rebooting off this drive, I was able to see my SATA drives. I had to trash all off my current partition info off the 2 SATA drives. Even though I make a living writing Windows software, I have yet to use Windows off my home system since OSX has been installed so why waste space for XP on this box. And my OSX partiotions were just to small to be usefull. Once I had 2 clean virgin drives, I was able to drag both drives to the raid window, setup a new Name for the RAID and specify type 0. Click on create and voila - A 280gb RAID 0. Granted, this is a software RAID versus a hardware one, but the performance should still be interesting. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/19154-internal-raid-partially-working/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wayland Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 So this is a software raid? Are there any known hardware raids working on OSX86??? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/19154-internal-raid-partially-working/#findComment-125633 Share on other sites More sharing options...
bofors Posted June 6, 2006 Author Share Posted June 6, 2006 So this is a software raid? Are there any known hardware raids working on OSX86??? Yes this is software RAID, I think we may have a shot at hardware RAID after Apple releases the new Pro Mac and Intel XServe as they should have the drivers to support (but they might require EFI). Software RAID or not, my XBench disk score almost doubled: it went from 71.19 to 127.27: Results 127.27 System Info Xbench Version 1.2 System Version 10.4.5 (8G1454) Physical RAM 4096 MB Model ADP2,1 Drive Type SwapRAID Disk Test 127.27 Sequential 166.00 Uncached Write 178.83 109.80 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Write 250.36 141.65 MB/sec [256K blocks] Uncached Read 95.34 27.90 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Read 248.62 124.96 MB/sec [256K blocks] Random 103.19 Uncached Write 44.30 4.69 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Write 247.47 79.22 MB/sec [256K blocks] Uncached Read 137.33 0.97 MB/sec [4K blocks] Uncached Read 205.41 38.12 MB/sec [256K blocks] Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/19154-internal-raid-partially-working/#findComment-125794 Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeSuKuN Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 few questions: So there's no way to to create a RAID-0 with my existing installation and a blank disk? What's the difference between GUID and Mac scheme? can only pc scheme boot in a pc? could 10.4.6 boot RAID volumes? I have some 1~2 GB IDE drives, can I use one of them to boot a RAID? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/19154-internal-raid-partially-working/#findComment-125904 Share on other sites More sharing options...
bofors Posted June 6, 2006 Author Share Posted June 6, 2006 So there's no way to to create a RAID-0 with my existing installation and a blank disk? No, even if RAID were working perfectly, you wolud still have to set up your RAID set before installing OS X on it. It essentially reformats the disk partions. What's the difference between GUID and Mac scheme? I am not entirely sure and the Mac scheme might have changed from 10.4.3 to 10.4.4 with EFI, but the GUID scheme clearly a creates special 200 MB parition that is part of the EFI specification and the Mac does not. Apple's implementation of EFI creates an empty partition (which I assume is the same as the 200 MB one create with the GUID scheme) that is otherwise supposed to be used as per the EFI specification. can only pc scheme boot in a pc? I do not know anything about booting from a disk formated in the "PC Scheme". I only know that I could not create RAID sets with those disks. could 10.4.6 boot RAID volumes? I doubt it will work in hacked OSx86 10.4.6. I have some 1~2 GB IDE drives, can I use one of them to boot a RAID? I am booting off a 30 GB IDE drive at the moment, but I think a minimal OS X installation might be more than 2 GB. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/19154-internal-raid-partially-working/#findComment-125929 Share on other sites More sharing options...
NeSuKuN Posted June 6, 2006 Share Posted June 6, 2006 I meant to place on those hard disks a minimal boot, like a bridge to allow booting from the raid and the system installed into the raid Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/19154-internal-raid-partially-working/#findComment-125955 Share on other sites More sharing options...
bofors Posted June 6, 2006 Author Share Posted June 6, 2006 I see. I do not know anything about the mechanics of the BIOS boot loader being used, but I suppose it would be possible somehow. However, I think that getting EFI working would solve this problem and a host of others. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/19154-internal-raid-partially-working/#findComment-125970 Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmmkay Posted July 7, 2006 Share Posted July 7, 2006 Is it not booting because the intel macs have a different partitioning scheme? GUID vs APM? I too have the D945GNTLKR board and I've been itching to get RAID working, too. I wasn't able to drag my disks into an array during the install of 10.4.6. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/19154-internal-raid-partially-working/#findComment-141030 Share on other sites More sharing options...
mmmkay Posted July 7, 2006 Share Posted July 7, 2006 Just another thought to add.. Would it be possible to have a 10.4.3 DVD handy, boot up, set up the RAID, reboot, and boot with the 10.4.6 install DVD and use the newly created raid set? That way you would be able to boot off the new raid set once installation was completed. Though, which drive to boot off of, I don't know, because with my setup I needed to run bless -mount /Volumes/MySATADisk -setBoot in order for the system to boot... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/19154-internal-raid-partially-working/#findComment-141039 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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