Drive Mirroring on a Standard G5 ??? (is it possible?)

D

djbeta

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I've setup a web server and some bulletin boards and some other MySQL databases on a PowerMac G5.

I am backing up the system daily... but I'm afraid in the event of major disk failure.. even that wouldn't be enough.

I would *love* to be able to set up an on-the-fly mirrored drive, so that if one fails, I can rely on the backup and keep the system up and running for the time being.

Is this possible on a non-server Powermac G5 ????? (it's a dual 2 Ghz).

If it's not possible, what is the next best thing ?

Thanks!
 
it's possible, but you really need a PCI card that does RAID mirroring (OSX can do RAID in software, but i don't think you can use the volumes in a RAID set to boot up from.. so it doesn't help much. the best solution would be with three or four drives: 2 in a mirrored RAID set, for data, and then one or two (RIAD striped, if it's two) drive(s) for the OS, apps, etc.

without extra mucking about, a PowerMac won't support this many drives (no physical space for them)..
 
thanks.

Are you saying that if I got a PCI RAID card, then I could have 2 drives (both with the OS on them ??)

In terms of space though.. the system is very small..

I'm using maybe 100 megs of hard drive space.. so 4 drives is a bit much. Any other possibilities ??
 
ok. in that case, buy a PCI RAID card that supports OSX, and is bootable, (some can be configured through Disk Utility i think) and a HDD of the same speed and size (same make/model may be a good idea too) and simply mirror the two drives. then if one fails, you have a "live" backup of your entire OS, and your data. there are some articles on the net about how to make a RAID mirror of your drive without having to format, creat the RAID set and re-install everything.. look on http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20041013121106176
 
Or just do the overnight back up thing and schedule it too with Retrospect to a tape drive or similar back up. You could set it to copy to a firewire hard drive, or whatever you wanted.
 
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