Help request - Creating Spare Drive (option is greyed out!) R4

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  • Last Post 09 May 2016
Matthew Slaughter posted this 05 May 2016

According to the manual on p69:

To create a spare drive: 1. Do one of the following actions: • From the Dashboard window, click the Spare Drive link. • From the Storage menu, choose Spare Drive. 2. Click the Create Spare Drive button. 

The button is greyed out.  How do I create a spare drive?

Context:

I have an R0 array via my Pegasus2 R4.  The array was created with all 4 bays filled with 2GB drives.  The top 3 are in use.  The bottom one is to be for a spare on which I will back up data.  I wish this bay to be able to back up my data on my 4GB spare HD and my 2TB spare HD.  That sounds simple in theory but the process has proved too difficult and counter-intuitive for me to work out, hence I have this issue with the greyed out "create spare drive" button.  I can't find any simple instructions explaining whether in order to create a spare drive - 

Should that drive bay start off empty?

Should it contain the drive which is to be designated spare? 

Or should it contain the HD which was originally configured as part of the array in the first instance?

I'm a bit of a noob here, so please be gentle... all I know is that there is nothing in that part of the manual that starts with "if the 'create spare drive button' is greyed out...."

I am sincerely hoping I don't have to clear the top 3 discs and start all over again in order to be able to have a basic set up in which my bottom bay allows for swappable backup discs...  I suspect I may have come into this naively!

Help will be much appreciated!

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Richard Oettinger posted this 05 May 2016

Hi Matthew,

You are using a RAID0 array - which really means "no RAID" - so you cant assign a Spare drive to it as it is not possible to rebuiuld the array in the event of a drive failure.

Also, RAID0 means no fault tolerance, so if you do lose one drive, all of the data is lost...

Cheers, Richard

Jerry Case posted this 05 May 2016

Hello Matthew,

 

 

To expand on what Richard had said.

 

Be aware that the current 3 disks in RAID 0 have no fault tollerance so if you lose any one of the three disks, all the data is lost and will possibly be unrecoverable even by a data recovery service.

 

That being said, if you just want to use the 4th disk to backup data too, you can do this a couple ways.

 

A brand new disk from the manufacturer will show up as Pass Thru.  So right now it's probably showing up as Pass Thru which means the Pegasus RAID engine won't use it at all and you can't use any of the Pegasus RAID engine utilities to manage it.

 

If the disk status is Pass Thru:

 

The Pegasus will completely ignore the disk and all functions of the Pegasus RAID engine are not available.  The raw disk will show up directly in the Mac Disk Utility where you can partition and format the disk as you would any external non-raid drive.

 

If the disk is Unconfigured:

 

Set up a new array and new LD as RAID 0 on a single disk.   The Pegasus RAID engine will allow you to create a single disk RAID 0.

 

 

 

Also note that the individual hard disk drive settlings allow you to change a disk from Pass Thru to Unconfigured, and back again.   Changing the state to unconfigured will make it look blank to the Pegasus.  Changing it to Pass Thru will let the Mac see it as a raw disk and use whatever Partition that is on it.  If this disk was a previous array disk  in Pegasus, it will look like  a raw non-partitioned disk to the Mac.

Best Regards

 

Jerry

 

 

Promise Technology

Matthew Slaughter posted this 05 May 2016

See attachment - this is a backup drive I have configured as per the attached image, but I can only see it when there are no discs in the top 3 bays - rendering it useless because I can't transfer any data to it if this drive and the populated drives won't play together...

SEe

Matthew Slaughter posted this 06 May 2016

Thanks , Jerry - 

"RAID0 means no fault tolerance, so if you do lose one drive, all of the data is lost..." this greatly troubles me - 

The problem is, it appears that any other RAID setting requires me to use at least half of my disc space for "fault tolerance". This is impractical for me - what I want is:

- to simply have my 3 x 2GB discs all nicely partitioned and in use as per usual, 

- to have the last bay for use of swappable spare drive to manually backup when I see fit

- to not have all of my drives fail if one of them goes wrong (ie I want each of my drives to act independently and not affect the other if they die).

Surely this type of configuration is possible - but nothing I have read about RAID indicates that anything above 0 will let me do this - and now I learn that 0 also means all drives die if one does.  Help!

Thanks again.

 

Be aware that the current 3 disks in RAID 0 have no fault tollerance so if you lose any one of the three disks, all the data is lost and will possibly be unrecoverable even by a data recovery service.

 

 

Promise Technology

Richard Oettinger posted this 06 May 2016

Matthew,

If you use RADI5 you dont lose half of the capacity for fault tolerance.

In you case, using three 2TB drives in a RAID5 will give you 4TB of usable protected capacity.

As for the forth drive, either use it as a "passthrough" drive or create a RAID0 using just that one drive. Then you can power the unit off, remove the drive and insert another one, and power on again; you can do this with as many drives as you like, and they will be useable in any Promise Pegasus.

This will give you two drives on your desktop...

 

Matthew Slaughter posted this 06 May 2016

Thanks. Prob with RAID5 is that parity is spread across 3 discs.  I don't want that - I want each and every one of my 4 discs to be independent items which if they individually develop a fault, won't spread this to the other two like an instantaneous disease of death. There has to be some way of doing this...?

what I want is:

- to simply have my 3 x 2GB discs all nicely partitioned and in use as per usual, and for them to be independent so that if one has probs the others can still be used

- to have the last bay for use of swappable spare drive to manually backup when I see fit

- to not have all of my drives fail if one of them goes wrong (ie I want each of my drives to act independently and not affect the other if they die).

RAID5 doesn't seem to be the solution if parity is shared across all three of those discs.    There surely is a way to do this?

Separate / aside question:

In any case, in order for me to change my RAID array configuration in any way, do I have to re-backup everything or can I do this without losing my data?  Does changing the RAID config require you to say goodbye to whatever is on those HD's?

Thanks again - I am researching this but seriously there is so much confusing info out there it is boggling my mind.

Matthew,

If you use RADI5 you dont lose half of the capacity for fault tolerance.

In you case, using three 2TB drives in a RAID5 will give you 4TB of usable protected capacity.

As for the forth drive, either use it as a "passthrough" drive or create a RAID0 using just that one drive. Then you can power the unit off, remove the drive and insert another one, and power on again; you can do this with as many drives as you like, and they will be useable in any Promise Pegasus.

This will give you two drives on your desktop...

Joe Engledow posted this 06 May 2016

Hi Matthew,

I've noticed this forum thread and I'd like us to learn from each other. I'm a bit confused by your requests.

If I take your meaning correctly you want the drives to be in a group, but you also don't want the group to suffer for the loss of a drive. There's no RAID level that can provide that. All the files are diffused across all the drives; if there's overlap, such as with redundancy (RAID1) or with parity (RAID5), the RAID will survive the loss of a physical drive; with neither parity nor redundancy (RAID0), the RAID will not survive the loss of a physical drive. Hard drives are moving parts; like wheels or lightbulbs they wear out, and our hardware RAID technology is meant to keep your data, not lose it.

If you want the drives in a disk array together, then they share the data between them, and they are affected by a loss of drives.

But if you want the drives to continue independently, then no RAID at all would fit your needs; just run all the drives as PassThru, and they will show up as four separate icons on your desktop. They will not share files; and in order to guard against the loss of any one of the drives, you would have to use a backup program such as Time Machine to make sure the files are saved in another location besides that one single hard drive. But if one drive is lost, the other three will still show up on your desktop.

 

Matthew Slaughter posted this 06 May 2016

Yes!  Thanks.

Absolutely, I don't want my discs as part of a group at all, and I thought that my only option was to select a RAID configuration.

Ok, so my question now is this:

Given that I want to have all of my drives in pass through mode, no RAID config, all independent discs - 

1. Can I change them to pass through mode now (from the RAID0 config they are currently in) without compromising the data that is already on them?

2. Once they are in pass through mode, what is the correct way for me to be able to use the lowest / fourth bay as a swappable drive bay for my spare 2TB and 4TB drives on which I will periodically manually back up the info contained on the in-use top three drives? ie I will need to be able to see all four drives at once - my three in use drives - as well as whichever backup drive I have in the bottom drawer - at any given time in order to do this.

Thanks!

I've noticed this forum thread and I'd like us to learn from each other. I'm a bit confused by your requests.

If I take your meaning correctly you want the drives to be in a group, but you also don't want the group to suffer for the loss of a drive. There's no RAID level that can provide that. All the files are diffused across all the drives; if there's overlap, such as with redundancy (RAID1) or with parity (RAID5), the RAID will survive the loss of a physical drive; with neither parity nor redundancy (RAID0), the RAID will not survive the loss of a physical drive. Hard drives are moving parts; like wheels or lightbulbs they wear out, and our hardware RAID technology is meant to keep your data, not lose it.

If you want the drives in a disk array together, then they share the data between them, and they are affected by a loss of drives.

But if you want the drives to continue independently, then no RAID at all would fit your needs; just run all the drives as PassThru, and they will show up as four separate icons on your desktop. They will not share files; and in order to guard against the loss of any one of the drives, you would have to use a backup program such as Time Machine to make sure the files are saved in another location besides that one single hard drive. But if one drive is lost, the other three will still show up on your desktop.

Joe Engledow posted this 06 May 2016

No, you have to delete the disk array to return the drives to unconfigured before setting each one to Pass Thru. You'll need to move the data off of the array before deleting it.

Once the PassThru drives are in the Pegasus and the Pegasus is on then you will see each PassThru drive as its own Promise Pegasus icon. At that point you can use Finder and Disk Utility to rename the icons and use Time Machine or Carbon Copy or any other file management tool to copy files and move files from one drive to another. They are independent of one another at that point.

Matthew Slaughter posted this 06 May 2016

Thanks - but damn.  Another big session of moving data.... ah, well!

What about the matter of being able to swap my spare 2TB and 4TB drives in and out of the bottom drawer?

Obviously my first job will be populating all 4 bays with the original 2TB drives and configuring as you have instruced for pass through mode.  What then do I do with the spare 2TB and 4TB drives to allow them to be used as swappable backup drives within that 4th bay? ie how do I format and configure them - and will the R4 let me do this in a way that lets me see all of them (the top 3 in use and the spare 2TB or 4TB - whichever one is in at the time) at once?

No, you have to delete the disk array to return the drives to unconfigured before setting each one to Pass Thru. You'll need to move the data off of the array before deleting it.

Once the PassThru drives are in the Pegasus and the Pegasus is on then you will see each PassThru drive as its own Promise Pegasus icon. At that point you can use Finder and Disk Utility to rename the icons and use Time Machine or Carbon Copy or any other file management tool to copy files and move files from one drive to another. They are independent of one another at that point.

Joe Engledow posted this 06 May 2016

Make each of those drives from the 4th bay into a passthru drive as well. Then when you put them in, the Pegasus will put it online as its own drive.

In this configuration we are discussing, the Pegasus will not use its hardware RAID capabilities and will behave like a Thunderbolt docking station for your drives. The drives will each have single drive transfer speeds and will not benefit from the increased speeds when reading from several drives at once or writing to several drives at once which RAID offers.

Matthew Slaughter posted this 06 May 2016

Make each of those drives from the 4th bay into a passthru drive as well. Then when you put them in, the Pegasus will put it online as its own drive.

 

Thanks.  Ok, so just to idiot-proof this for me:

1. I start with all 4 bays populated with 2TB drives and start from scratch - configuring them in pass through mode as discussed.

2. Now I want to have two spare drives - a 2TB and a 4TB to similarly configure as "swappable" backup drives.  Do I leave all the top 3 bays filled with my pass-through drives for this process?  Or do I need to empty the top three and focus on the bottom drawer, starting with the 2TB, configuring it, then doing the same for the 4TB?  Or can I configure my "spare" drives with the top 3 bays populated as normal?

Sorry for this idiocy and thanks for your patience. 

 

In this configuration we are discussing, the Pegasus will not use its hardware RAID capabilities and will behave like a Thunderbolt docking station for your drives. The drives will each have single drive transfer speeds and will not benefit from the increased speeds when reading from several drives at once or writing to several drives at once which RAID offers.

Understood.  I actually bought this unit expressly to use essentially as a thunderbolt docking station for all of my drives.  That is precisely how I want and need to use it!  I wish I had explained it this way to start with, it would have been less confusing for everyone helping me :)

Joe Engledow posted this 06 May 2016

Leave the top 3 drives as passthru's, take out your 4th drive, put in your other 4th drive, make it passthru as well, take it out, put in your next drive in the 4th bay, and start saving to it, changing out the drives for other passthru drives however you want to set that up.

Matthew Slaughter posted this 07 May 2016

Thanks so much.  Ok, the journey begins....

Make each of those drives from the 4th bay into a passthru drive as well. Then when you put them in, the Pegasus will put it online as its own drive.

In this configuration we are discussing, the Pegasus will not use its hardware RAID capabilities and will behave like a Thunderbolt docking station for your drives. The drives will each have single drive transfer speeds and will not benefit from the increased speeds when reading from several drives at once or writing to several drives at once which RAID offers.

Joe Engledow posted this 09 May 2016

No, you have to delete the disk array to return the drives to unconfigured before setting each one to Pass Thru. You'll need to move the data off of the array before deleting it.

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