Apple G Raid

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This 2TB external drive with FW 800 and USB connections from G-Technologies contains two 1TB drives that are combined into one large 2TB storage device using a build in hardware RAID controller merging both drives using RAID 0 (striped) technology.

Advantages of a striped RAID are:

In the Disk Utility app on your Mac, choose File RAID Assistant. Select a set type: Striped (RAID 0) set: A striped RAID set can speed up access to your data. You can't create a RAID set on your startup disk; you must first start up your computer from another disk. Choose from: G-Technology 10TB G-DRIVE USB-C External Hard Drive,G-Technology 12TB G-RAID with Thunderbolt 3 Hard Drive Storage System Global Nav Open Menu Global Nav Close Menu Apple.

• Faster read-write speeds
• One large single volume

The big disadvantage of a Striped RAID (Raid 0) is a much greater chance of failure that is very hard to recover data from from when things go wrong.

A good analogy for a RAID 0 configuration is a zipper. Once a skips a single tooth the entire system breaks. Failure can easily be caused when the power is interrupted when de drive is reading or writing data. Things get out of sync and all is lost unless a very expensive data recovery is called in to action.

This drive had failed twice. This time I disassembled the beautiful G-drive enclosure and extracted both 3,5' eSATA hard drives and tested each of them on SMART status and Bad block using Techtool Pro. Both drives passed the 4 hour long test with flying colors.

After putting everything thing back together I decided to reprogram the Drive controller to a much safer RAID 1 (mirrored) configuration. Rather than combining both drives into one large volume. A Mirrored RAID writes data simultaneous to all drives creating an exact image. In case a drive fails there will be no loss of data since there are exact duplicates available. The down side is a slower read / write speed and less storage space.

To reprogram the G-Raid controller you need to download the software from the G-Technology support website. The software is terribly out of date and needs OS X 10.6 or Windows XP.

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Once the drives are reconfigured I used Disk-Utilty to format the volume in the for OSX appropriate format: GUID partitioning and Mac OS Extended (journaled).

Now it is ready to be connected with a Firewire 800 cable to a Mac of a fast back-up using Apple Time Machine or SuperDuper. To prevent future failures and prolong the life of your sensitive electronics I highly recommend to use a APC surge protector with battery back-up.

Disk Utility User Guide

You can create a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) set to optimize storage performance and increase reliability in case of a disk failure. You can also create a set that concatenates smaller disks to act as one larger disk.

1. In the Disk Utility app on your Mac, choose File > RAID Assistant.

2. Select a set type:

   • Striped (RAID 0) set: A striped RAID set can speed up access to your data. You can't create a RAID set on your startup disk; you must first start up your computer from another disk.

   • Mirrored (RAID 1) set: Protect your data against hardware failure with a mirrored RAID set. When you create a mirrored RAID set, your data is written to multiple disks so the information is stored redundantly. You can't create a RAID set on your startup disk; you must first start up your computer from another disk.

   • Concatenated (JBOD) set: Increase storage space with a concatenated disk set. If you need one large disk, but you have several smaller disks, you can create a concatenated disk set to use as one large disk.

3. Select the checkboxes of the disks you want to include in the set.

4. For each disk, click the pop-up menu in the Role column and choose 'RAID slice' or 'Spare' to designate the disk as a standard member or spare in the set, then click Next.

5. Enter a name for the RAID set in the RAID Name field.

6. Click the Format pop-up menu, then choose a volume format that you want for all the disks in the set. (See File system formats available in Disk Utility.)

7. Click the 'Chunk size' pop-up menu, then choose a disk chunk size that you want used for all the disks.

   When you create a striped set, chunks of data from the same file are distributed across the drives. Ideally, you want data distributed across drives evenly and at an optimum size so that it can be efficiently accessed. If you want high data throughput from your set, choose a smaller chunk size so that data is spread across the drives and one drive can be accessing data while another is seeking the next chunk. With mirrored disk sets, choose a chunk size that matches the data you're accessing. For example, when working with video files, your Mac is accessing large chunks of data, whereas when using a database of many small records, your disks may be accessing smaller chunks of information.

8. If you are creating a mirrored RAID set, select the 'Automatically rebuild' checkbox to allow the set to be automatically rebuilt when member disks are reconnected. How to turn on apple imac desktop.

9. Click Create.

10. Click Done.

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If you have a Mac Pro with a Mac Pro RAID card, use RAID Utility. It uses the RAID card for better performance and to create more types of RAID sets.

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See alsoOverview of creating disk sets using Disk Utility on MacDelete a disk set using Disk Utility on MacUnmount a disk set or disk member using Disk Utility on MacRepair a disk in a mirrored disk set using Disk Utility on MacAdd a disk to a disk set using Disk Utility on Mac