I have been using a 2Tb G-Raid drive with two 1Tb drives for some years, but now that my Mac has crashed I would like to use it with Linux - KDE Neon - for which I understand there is no software available. Nevertheless, I can access the drive, read and write without issues but is it still running as a RAID? I mean, is one of the drives still mirroring what happens in the other one? As far as I can tell Linux only finds one drive of 1Tb, so it seems to me that the other 1Tb drive it is still working in a mirror-like manner and if one of the drives fails, the data is safe on the other one. But, how can I verify that?
The RAID is hardware controlled with those old units and it cannot be altered. You can format it as many times as you want but it will remain a RAID0 device.
I didn’t format it after setting it up with Mac, and I would swear I set it up as a RAID1. For the time being I have just plugged it into Linux. It is still formatted as HFS+, and all I can see is a 1Tb drive, so I thought it remains a RAID1. If it is a RAID0 shouldn’t I be able to see 2Tb, the total capacity of the two drives inside it?
So it depends on which G-RAID it is. If it has Thunderbolt + USB then its one of the removable units and it can be changed between RAID0 and 1. If it is not a removable unit then you cannot change the RAID policy and it is RAID0 only.
Sorry, I should have started by mentioning the exact model but it has taken me a while to find the box. It is a G-RAID 2TB (Gen 4) EMEA. It contains two Hitachi 7200 RPM drives of 1Tb each, the chipset is Oxford 936 and the interfaces are eSATA 3Gbit, FireWire 400 and 800, and USB 2.0. It seems the production date was December 2011. So, having those details, if I don’t format it and let it run as HFS+, will it continue running as a RAID1? Sorry if I keep repeating myself but I am a bit concerned about it. I remember setting it up as a RAID1 and it does look like that but if there is a chance that it is not, I should quickly get another drive to use as a backup.
The device is RAID0 only, it does not have the ability to run as a RAID1 device.
Only our G-RAID removable devices that were made in 2014+ have the ability to be changed to RAID1.
