[SOLVED] Mac OS RAID Storage

[mikepeppers]

Is there a way to create / work RAIDs with Mac OS that allows for faster rebuilds of a "degraded drive" than taking all day?
For example if I accidentally plug in 1 of 2 HDs that are part of a mirrored RAID of say 3TB each drive, it somehow takes hours to rebuild, even though nothing really has changed data wise.

I'm a one man band video editor, so my video storage needs are extensive. Several years ago, I took to using a RAID approach for safety more than speed, but for both really. Learning as I went, I took the simple and cost effective approach of using Mac OS software RAID. It's worked pretty well but has become unruly.

Disk utility is pretty limited in the way it works with RAIDS that were built using it. I'm just wondering if there's a better way overall. But at the very least I'm looking for faster rebuilds of degraded drives that aren't really faulty.

Thanks.

 

[USAFRet]

Rebuilding a RAID 5 WILL take a long time.
It needs to sync the data across all 3 drives.

The larger the data space and drives, the longer it will take.

When I upgraded from a 4 x3TB to a 4x 4TB RAID 5, with approx 6.5TB data on it...it took 6-7 hours to rebuild with each new drive.
There is no shortcut.

 

[mikepeppers]

Rebuilding a RAID 5 WILL take a long time.
It needs to sync the data across all 3 drives.

The larger the data space and drives, the longer it will take.

When I upgraded from a 4 x3TB to a 4x 4TB RAID 5, with approx 6.5TB data on it...it took 6-7 hours to rebuild with each new drive.
There is no shortcut.

Thanks for the reply. Yes I have a few different RAID types (RAID 10, and 1 mostly as I always try to keep a mirror).

As software RAIDs are concerned is there any big difference between using Disk Utility and a 3rd party app like SoftRAID?

 

[USAFRet]

As far as the RAID controller, a hardware thing is always better than software. I don't know enough about macs to have an opinion one way or the other.

And RAID, of any type, really isn't a good backup safety mechanism for your data.
True backups are.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Yeah I don’t know why you’re wasting time with raid it’s a complete waste and it’s not safe

 

[mikepeppers]

Thanks for the responses. I'm happy to ditch RAID. But ultimately my goals in media storage are to minimise hassle and wastes of time, and minimise risk of data loss. So if you can take a few seconds, what are your favourite ways to accomplish this?

Is it having a backup disk for every drive? Automated backups? Software that manages it? Any detail on workflow would be appreciated...

 

[USAFRet]

In the Windows world, I use Macrium Reflect for exactly this.
Automated, on a schedule, every system and every drive gets a Full or Incremental backup every night.
Keep a rolling 30 day set. All stored in one top level folder in my NAS box.

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

For Mac, I assume Time Machine.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201250

 

[spinningstill]

For what it's worth.

iMac for work drive then once it is done it goes to the RAID0 (1.5T). Thunderbay.

RAID0 is good (HGST). I may go to 5 once I get settled. I use it for photography. I also have three backups. I would not use RAID as a back up.

Carbon Copy Cloner - Daily and one ran weekly, two separate drives. Backblaze! They have lifetime back up ability.

I don't recommend time machine.

Grace and peace.