Loren Miller warns of a problem archiving LaCie drives formatted as RAIDs. As well, at the end of Loren’s write-up, I included the text of the original note from LaCie support.
My Quest for a “Forever” RAID Box
Some background: I’ve created RAID 0 striped pairs on my 2009 Mac Pro (model 4,1) for years.
Workflow: When one pair isn’t needed I extract the pair, label it A & B, encase them for storage on the shelf. (TIP: Container Store carries a 4X6 Photo/Craft box which just fits 3.5” bare drives! )
I’ll start a second RAID 0 pair for a new client by throwing fresh drives into the same two drive bays, stripe them as RAID 0, and when done, zip! Pull ‘em out, to the shelf, and I’m back on yet another client’s RAID pair with instant access to his or her media. I recall I’ve also returned a RAID pair to a different set of bays, such as 1-2 or 2-3— no issue. The software picks up the config.
That’s been my only experience with RAID. It’s software RAID run by Apple’s Disk Utility, for pure speed. It’s worked just fine.
But my “new” Mac Pro 2013 doesn’t have drive bays. And I have a growing cadre of 4K clients to serve.
So I shopped a bit, and purchased a LaCie 2Big 8TB Thunderbolt 2 / USB 3.x RAID box from B&H with 2 drive doors, preformatted in OS X HFS Extended. I set it to RAID 0 for pure speed, plugged it into the dumdum bullet. Serves up a couple streams of 4K Pro Res 422 (HQ) just fine. I was delighted. I had a colleague buy the same 8TB box for his purposes.
Because it has doors for the pair, I fully expected I could extract each RAID 0 set when full or simply not needed, carefully label the RAID set “A & B,” put it on the storage shelf, and follow my classic RAID workflow. I call this capability an FDR- Forever Drive RAID system. I expect it would extend to SSD drives as well.
For a new client, I was about to buy a fresh pair of enterprise drives like IronWolf Pro’s – La Cie lists them as recommended.
But something told me to hold off and investigate the box first. I checked LaCie documentation. (They’ve been owned since 2014 by Seagate, decent manufacturer, almost as good as HGST, slightly higher failure rate). Nothing in the doc about pulling and re-loading a striped pair. Why was that?
I wrote in. LaCie bumped the note up to Seagate. A very polite fellow explained in so many words that If I try to reload the archived RAID set, the hardware will overwrite the original “ID code” and all the data becomes toast.
Meanwhile, the tech support suggested I back up the pair to ANOTHER 2Big 8TB and wipe the box.
I still read this advice with jaw dropped. To me, this was BDD – Brain Dead Design – I wasn’t about to compound the problem!
I had to lower my review of that product for not disclosing this omitted documentation, and wondered why the hell are there even doors on that beast?
This model of the LaCie “Big” series, (and possibly the others), for all its speed, is a dead end box. “Hot swappable” is meaningless here — the drive doors should be hot-glued shut.
Now I’m looking at Drobo and OWC products. Is Drobo the same, or is archive reloading allowed in either? OWC carries some interesting RAID configs, using “SoftRaid” software for striping. I have questions in to both vendors. If not, what brand name RAID 0 box has this simple and fundamental feature in a reliable hardware or software config? And has pair cycling been tested on it?
In a separate email, Loren continues: “Regarding my Forever Drive RAID system quest, I dug out the actual Seagate tech support explanation.”
LaCie Support writes:
Thank you for contacting LaCie Support. My name is Cristian and I hope, you’re having a great day, I would like to thank you for the great comments you’re doing on your product, we’re happy that the device has met your expectations of working with 4k files.
Now, we will have to inform you that the process you’re looking to do, can’t be reached with this device, we can’t just simply take the drives off, keep them on the side for when we want to recover the information, allow me to explain more.
The raid controller of your LaCie device gives an ID to the raid created with the two drives you already have configured, once you put other drives, it will create another ID and will only work with that ID, if we take the old drives from the device and put them into it, the device won’t recognize the past ID and will attempt to create another one, meaning it will delete the old information from the drives.
The process we recommend is getting another drive with the same capacity, do a backup and then reformat your LaCie device to keep using it. We do not recommend taking your drives out from the device if you don’t have at least one copy from your files anywhere else.
Please reply to this email if you require further assistance or have any other doubt. We will be happy to help you from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM Central time, Monday – Friday. We’ve also provided our support link down below in case you would like to contact us by phone at your convenience.
Regards,
Cristian
Seagate Support
Larry adds: Thanks, Loren, for this detailed write-up. As always, I’m interested in comments from other readers.
17 Responses to Caution: Problems Archiving LaCie RAID Drives
Newer Comments →-
Blair Thornton says:
December 9, 2019 at 5:20 am
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Larry says:
December 9, 2019 at 5:26 am
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shaun fothergill says:
December 9, 2019 at 5:21 am
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Larry says:
December 9, 2019 at 5:27 am
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John Mills says:
December 9, 2019 at 6:44 am
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Larry says:
December 9, 2019 at 7:02 am
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Jeff Orig says:
December 9, 2019 at 9:35 am
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Ronald says:
December 9, 2019 at 9:45 am
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Dave says:
December 9, 2019 at 11:43 am
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Larry says:
December 9, 2019 at 6:53 pm
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Jon Lindemann says:
December 9, 2019 at 12:00 pm
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Mike Janowski says:
December 9, 2019 at 12:11 pm
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Mike Janowski says:
December 10, 2019 at 7:22 am
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Nick Rains says:
December 9, 2019 at 1:41 pm
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Tod Hopkins says:
December 9, 2019 at 2:14 pm
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Mike Janowski says:
December 10, 2019 at 7:23 am
Newer Comments →Avoid the Drobo option if you want speed. Bad experience x2 with them.
Blair:
The Drobo software was never designed for speed, it was designed for flexibility, expansion and simplicity.
They are solid units, just not very fast.
Larry
This is data suicide – I have a fixed 10t Raid a Big 5 20t and a G-tech club 64t – I was planning to use the 20t as my archive device – meaning pull out the drives and reload with new ones to start a fresh backup/archive cycle – if I have read this correctly this is impossible now. The whole point or at least a feature would be able to swap out a set as an archive and then reload them if ever needed or am I wrong?
Shaun:
Keep in mind that Loren was reporting problems with LaCie. You are using G-Tech. The problems MAY not exist.
Before doing any RAID archiving, check with the support team at your storage vendor and make SURE that they support what you want to do. What Loren discovered, was the Seagate did not.
Larry
This seems to be standard practice, it also applies to ICY docks see below taken from manual.
“3. Do not replace both drives in any RAID mode, as both drives will cause the enclosure to rewrite the RAID table. Once this done, the original drives will no longer function in RAID 1 array.”
John:
Thanks for the update – I had no idea this was a problem. I’m glad Loren brought it to our attention.
Larry
Loren, I know this doesn’t solve your problem but I have been using 2 bay WD thunderbolt 1 drives for the purpose you describe. This has been serving us well for about 9 years. About a couple of years ago we tried a few 4 bay gen 1 RAID USB 3 enclosures from MediaSonic using SoftRaid. I configured those as RAID 1+0. It was worked well but note that all the computers using the drives need the SoftRaid drivers installed or the computer will crash. Kind of inconvenient but there were some years where Disk Utility didn’t make RAIDs. I think they brought it back though. We also have a couple of the 8 bay USB 3 enclosure from Mediasonic. I use those as JBOD but have put in RAID 1 mirrored pairs along with single drives with no issues. Though one of the bays in one of the boxes has gone bad. The other 8 bay unit has been fine. I have an OWC 2 bay USB 3 enclosure that has RAID 1, RAID 0, and single disk switches on back. Supposedly it will create those RAID formats upon pressing the set button. I haven’t had success creating RAID 1 mirrors with that switch. Instead, I have used the single disk mode then used SoftRaid to create the RAID 1.
I just bought an Orico 2 bay dock with cloning capability. It just arrived and I will be experimenting with it. Because this is a dock, it is not fully enclosed. Not really meant for long term use but rather pulling drives from a shelf and quickly being able to work with those drives again. I have single bay docks but felt the need for a 2 bay dock. Please note, I don’t plan to use the cloning feature as it has mixed reviews. If I need a clone, I will use a computer to do it.
To sum it up, I recommend looking at enclosures as your go to. Then just get compatible drives. I think enclosures are purpose built for what you want to do. Plus, you can pick and choose exactly what kinds of drives to fill the enclosure with. I am thinking about getting the mediasonic 2 bay enclosure. But opted for the Orico dock for now as an experiment.
Hopefully this is useful.
Is the lesson here, don’t use RAID for backup and archiving, just copy the stuff you want to store?
A key point Loren may be missing is that in the first example (classic Mac Pro tower) the RAID was software-based. In the other case, with the LaCie enclosure it seems that the RAID was hardware-based. So, it’s inherently incorrect to compare the two schemes. LaCie (and other, similar) drive encllosures that have built-in HW RAID functionality are often end-user devices (and not made to have drives swapped unless there is a failure, and depending on the RAID schema used). HW-based RAID PCIe host cards, or controllers built into enclosures may function differently from model to model, or brand to brand.
A solution to Loren’s dilemma would be to get a “swappable” enclosure that is just for “JBOD” use, or one where any built-in RAID HW can be bypassed. Then, use something like SoftRAID to format the drives. With newer drive hardware, enclosures, and computer interfaces, using a SW-based RAID likely won’t be significantly slower.
I’ve used SoftRAID to do what Loren used to do with Disk Utility and the classic Mac Pro, using an external enclosure and SoftRAID, without any issues.
Hope this info helps. Cheers!
Dave:
I think you’ve hit on a key point – hardware vs. software RAIDs. In the past, hardware RAIDs were much faster. But SoftRAID is now supporting seriously fast through-put, with the advantage that it prevents the kind of issue Loren discovered.
Larry
Larry,
I sent the link to this page to Customer Support at SoftRAID. Below is their response. I have been using SoftRAID for 9 years in multiple configurations with internal and OWC external enclosures with no difficulties whatsoever.
I hope this helps.
Jon
*************
SoftRAID partition maps are self-contained, which ensures all disks are independent of how they are connected to the Mac.
For example you can create a volume on a different computer, using drives in a USB enclosure, then move the drives to a separate enclosure and Mac via Thunderbolt. No problem.
You could even take 4 functioning SSD drives out of a Thunderbay, or the 4 blades from a OWC Mercury Express M.2/4, and move them internal to the new Mac Pro. (Using third party PCI cards / adapters) Your volume will mount perfectly. (and faster!)
Hardware RAID enclosures can also be set to “JBOD” mode, then used with SoftRAID.
Mark James
mjames @ SoftRAID.com
I suggest cheap Chinese cages. I use Oyen 5-bay drives, striped in RAID 5. And with a simple flip of three switches, I can to to any other format I choose (0, 1, 10, JBOD).
No overwriting, no confusion.
While Seagate may make good drives, LaCie has been on my “DO Not Buy” list for a long time.
And to clarify (based on some other comments I just read)…I have had no problems removing RAID sets, swapping RAID sets, and swapping sets formatted differently. As long as one makes sure the switch position on the back of the unit is set for the proper config, you can go from a 5-drive JBOD setup to RAID 5, 0, 1, or 10 without any problems.
As LONG AS the switches are set correctly…
The OP is trying to achieve something that the product is not designed for and then complaining about it. As for the comments about why does it even have doors, well maybe because you might need to take one drive out at some point, or even both to put bigger ones in? ‘Hot-swappable’ only applies to RAID setups where you can replace a dive without powering down whilst maintaining access to the data. AFAIK, RAID5 or above with 4 or more drives is the minimum spec for this. That’s what I have in a series of QNAP units and it works as advertised. BTW, spinning drives are not designed to be archived in this way. The lubrication can fail over time and there is no guarantee they they will spin up. Stored HDs are not a long term archive solution.
RAIDs formats are highly dependent on the system that configured them. They not designed to be “portable” and RAID 0 is particularly fragile. Notwithstanding LaCie’s poor design choice, you should consider this a lesson learned and implement a safer backup routine.
Uh, how many times has Larry said “RAIDs are NOT archival”?