User guide

18 RAID Utility User Guide
Setup Examples
The following examples show some common ways to set up RAID volumes.
Migrating to a Single RAID Volume
This is the easiest way to set up a RAID volume on a new computer. There’s no need
to reinstall the operating system or restore existing les on the computer’s startup
disk. However, the migration process does take some time and you can’t use the new
volume until the process is nished.
The example assumes that you’ve purchased a computer with a RAID card and four
500 GB disk drives. The computer is shipped with the operating system on the rst
disk.
With four disks, you can choose to migrate the existing startup volume to a RAID
volume based on a RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, or RAID 0+1 scheme. For the best
combination of performance, protection, and volume size, let’s choose RAID 5 for this
example. With RAID 5, roughly one drive’s worth of the space is dedicated to parity
data, so the usable space on the volume in this example will be roughly equivalent to
the total capacity of the three remaining disks.
To set up this example:
Start up the computer using the Mac OS X or Mac OS X Server installation disc that
comes with the computer. When the rst Installer pane appears, choose your language
and click Next. When the menu bar appears, choose Utilities > RAID Utility and then
choose the Migrate RAID Set command. Finally, in the dialog that appears, you choose
Maximum Protection, make sure all three remaining drives are selected, select “Expand
volume using added capacity,” and then click Migrate.
When the migration process nishes, you’ll have a single, RAID-protected startup
volume with additional space for storing data.