Mac – Is it possible to restore a backup from a single disk on RAID1

backuposx-serverraidtime-machine

I want to setup a Mac Mini Server with the following configuration.

The Mac Mini server has 2*1TB HDDs.
I want to do the following:

  1. Setup the server
  2. Create a backup of the system on an external drive with Time Machine
  3. Create RAID1 with the two internal disks, according to this Link the disks should be empty then
  4. Then I want to restore the backup created in step 2 on the RAID1
  5. Backup all future data on the RAID1 system on the external drive

The RAID1 should give us the reliability we need, while the backups should ensure data security. However I am not 100% sure whether I can restore the backup made in step 2 on a RAID1 system. I assume it makes no difference as a RAID1 should be handled like a single disk by the OS.

Is it possible to restore a backup from a single disk on RAID1?

Best Answer

I believe it can be done but you lose the recovery partition and depending on your IT skills and willingness to start from scratch if the O/S gets hosed it might be a viable opportunity.

Note that I have not done this with Mavericks or Time Machine.

You need to boot from an O/S install disk. you can make one out of an 8GB flash drive with the Mavericks installer app and a number of freely available tools. Once you have booted from the O/S installer flash drive, bring up disk utility and wipe the drives of all partitions. Delete them. Then under the RAID tab make a RAID out of those two disks and partition as you want. Probably just best to stick with one partition unless you have a specific need for more than one.

Once that is done you can install the o/s on the RAID and restore your apps/files/settings from the external disk.

Note that I restored with a disk image using Carbon Copy Cloner from within disk utility, worked great but on an earlier O/S. So feedback from other folks would be good before committing to this procedure.

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