RAID will not mount but exists in disk utility

[walterny]

I have a G4 (silver) 10.3.9 with a Huge Raid and Atto UL4S Scsi card. I use it for FCP editing. I was testing out making a movie on the drive. When I hit enter to make the movie the drive beeped 6 times which the manual says is due to cabling, termination, disk time out, etc. But it says is not due to a disk error. The drive was no longer mounted. I reboot and now the drive made the same beeps. I checked the disk utility and the drive is there and I can verify the volume but I can not mount it when I try. It does not appear on the desktop. It is grey. It asks for a password but does nothing after I enter it. I checked the drive companies site and it states:

"The Mac OS file systems sometimes will corrupt the file system where the disk array will no longer mount, this seems to affect all disk storage devices. The disk array could be seen with Apple's Disk Utilities but it would not mount. Using one of the following 3rd party utility will in most cases recover the file systems and it's files."

I disk a permissions repair on the boot drive but nothing. I downloaded Data Rescue (one of the two choices) and ran it but what files am I looking for and what would I do with them to repair them?

 

[tumbleguts]

If I understand you correctly - the RAID has failed. I'm assuming because you are using this RAID for movie editing it is in a "striped" RAID configuration. Striped RAID failure _can_ happen, and this is why sometimes they are not recommended - because (unlike other RAID configurations) striped RAID can make the task of retrieving the data difficult. That said, it seems that although your RAID has failed (indicated by an un-mountable RAID set) you have the ability to retrieve the data using a 3rd party utility such as Data Rescue. The files you should be looking for is anything you wish to save. If there is nothing on the RAID array that you wish to save then there is no reason to use such a utility.

To restore the RAID I believe you will need to delete the RAID and recreate it. (Although, please wait until others have posted as there might be a way to restore the RAID without deleting the content.) You have not mentioned whether you are using Apple's "Disk Utility" to create the RAID or 3rd party RAID software? As to why the RAID failed in the first place (I'm not sure). But, by what you mention above with the beeps it could be that your cabling / termination is incorrect...

Please let me know if this helps?
Out of interest, what was the other 3rd party utility that they recommended?

 

[walterny]

"If I understand you correctly - the RAID has failed. "


No you did not understand correctly. The beeps were six which means connection problem. Two long beeps means disk failure. I did nothing but attempt to write to the drive and suddenly it lost connection. It boots fine. The disk is still accessible but it will not mount on the desktop but shows up in the disk utility and verifies. The company says it has something to do with a OSX file becoming corrupt. I was looking for an answer as to which file it might be. I'll have to wait till monday for an answer from the company that makes the raid.

 

[tumbleguts]

It boots fine. The disk is still accessible but it will not mount on the desktop but shows up in the disk utility and verifies. The company says it has something to do with a OSX file becoming corrupt. I was looking for an answer as to which file it might be.

In that case, I would recommend using a disk utility such as "Disk Warrior". (Yes, there are others, but Warrior seems to be the most successful.) If your problem is in fact corrupted OS X files, this utility would be able to fix it. You will not be able to fix the file yourself using a data recovery application like Data Rescue. (Which is why I asked you what the other 3rd party utility was that they recommended?). But obviously, if you have access to company hardware support - I would wait for their recommendations before doing anything.

When you do get feedback back from the company (and should it fix the problem), please post back here so that others may benefit from the solution.

 

[walterny]

When you do get feedback back from the company (and should it fix the problem), please post back here so that others may benefit from the solution.

You bet I will. Thanks for your assistance.

 

[walterny]

Here is the answer. The drive is suddenly not recognized. I have talked to others who say this has happened to them over time with various dirves. It can be seen in the disk utility of OSX which means it was still there but not on the desktop. Perhaps the partition tables got corrupted by OSX. I downloaded Data Rescue II which allows you to see all files that are on the drive. I selected all the files other than partition info and recovered them to another drive, reformatted the drive in question and copied the files back tot he drive. Problem solved!