RAID and Leopard

[dmetzcher]

I have three internal 500GB drives in my Mac Pro. I'd like to know if I can set them up as one large volume with hotswap capabilities. I've heard before that I can use RAID to get a single 1TB volume out of the three, and swap out any of the three drives if only one fails at any point in the future. Is this true?

I know that I can RAID the three drives together and get one large 1.5TB drive, but I'm thinking that losing one of the 500GB drives and adding the ability to swap one of the three out if it fails, without losing data, would be better.

Is this a good idea (running Mac OS X on a RAID array)?
Is it better to just have one drive for the OS and then RAID the other two together for a 1TB file storage volume? Does Mac OS X work well on a RAID array?

My backups will all be done with Time Machine to an external 2TB drive, so backups will not be an issue.

Also, if all the internal drives were to fail at the same time, and my Time Machine backup were all that I had, could I buy three new 500GB drives, RAID them together again, and restore from Time Machine (I'm assuming yes, since a volume is a volume, but I wanted to check first).

Thanks!

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

You would need a hardware-controlled RAID card in order to have "hot swap" capabilities.

As it stands, the RAID functions in OS X are software-based. You only have the option of stripe or mirror (RAID 0 or 1).

If you want true RAID functionality, I highly suggest getting a hardware-based RAID -- maybe an external RAID enclosure with FireWire 800 or eSATA or something.

In either a RAID 1 or RAID 5 array, you can lose a disk without losing any data -- of course, the RAID must be rebuilt/repaired after losing a disk, which could take some time.