The MacMini Server (Lion Server) comes with 2 x 500 or 2×750 GB Hard drive. Unfortunetly these drives are set as two separate drives. The steps below were carried out to have the MacMini running RAID1 with the two 750 GB drives mirrored.
Hopefully this can help point you in the correct direction, minus the heavy swearing and hurling of objects within reach.
Items needed:
- MacMini Server with Lion Server,
- External hard drive (I used a 500GB USB hard drive),
- Also useful – USB Flash drive (1GB),
- Time – And lots of it.
Note:
Please read the “IMPORTANT INFORMATION” link!!!
The steps below were the steps I carried out after trawling the internet. This post is only inform you lovely people of the steps I took.
Method:
- Setup MacMini Server –
Setup the MacMini server as you would normally. - Create Recovery Disk-
Lion offers the hidden partition which allows for a user to boot into a recovery section – Essentially Lion’s version of booting off a Snow Leopard Install disc. This feature is only avaliable when Lion is installed on a single drive – and will not be avalibale when installed on a RAID array.
Create the Recovery Disk to a USB drive from Apple Download. - Backup Server – (Optional, but be safe!)
To be safe, I backed up to multiple external drives (TimeMachine, Disk Image and also SuperDuper!) - Clone Hard Drive – SuperDuper!
Attach the external USB hard drive – Run SuperDuper! and copy the Server HD (main boot drive) to the external drive.
I used the settings – Repair permissions of Server HD, erase destination HDD, boot from destination HDD when copy is complete. - OPTIONAL – Check you can boot from external USB drive.
Turn the MacMini server off, Hold ALT when booting to ensure you can boot from external USB drive (Just being safe again) - Erase Hard Drives
After booting off external HDD, go to Disk Utilities, and select the internal hard drives > Erase > Security Options > Move the slider on notch to the right – To select Zero out drive.
I did not do this the first time, and MacMini would Kernel Panic when booting (So this was the second time I did it! :D)
Zeroing a 750 GB HDD took about 2 hours each. Don’t bother hanging around! - Create RAID
Create the RAID 1 Array with the two cleared hard drives, - Zero the RAID
I am not sure if this is needed, but this is what I did – Zero the newly created RAID 1 drive – Another 2 hours to burn! - Clone external HDD to RAID1 HDD,
Using SuperDuper again, clone the external hard drive back to the RAID1 Hard drive. - Reboot
Now – this failed for me. If I had a hammer, I would have beat the MacMini senseless.
I booted off the USB hard drive yet again, and ran permission repair on the RAID hard drive. You cannot run this from the GUI from the Disk Utility, so much be done via command line.
Open terminal > diskutil listdisk – Find which disk your RAID drive is – for me, it was disk2 (0 and 1 were the physical drives)
diskutil repairPermissions /disk2.
After a restart, it booted from the RAID drive.
Links :