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(Apologies if I've misunderstood the purpose of superuser and posted this in the wrong place, but this seems the most likely place I'm going to get ahead with my issue.)

I purchased a Lacie Big Disk Quadra (with two bays) that was completely original minus the hard drives, so was essentially an enclosure. I repopulated the bays with 2x 1TB drives to bring it back to it's original configuration. Once initialised, the volumes are striped and appear as a single 2TB volume by default.

My goal is simple: I wish to amend this configuration so that the two volumes are in a RAID 1 configuration, and therefore acts as a 1TB (mirrored) volume.

My understanding is that since this device operates via the hardware's RAID controller, the only way to configure the device setup characteristics (to either RAID 1 directly, or into JBOD mode which I can then use to create a software RAID in OS X) would be with Lacie's utility. Here's my issue: after many attempts, trial and error etc, I cannot get the device to show up in the Lacie RAID Manager.

I have done the following:

  • checked the firmware is up to date (using Lacie's firmware checker, which would only work in Snow Leopard), which it is
  • tried the device with two Macs, booting natively between Snow Leopard and El Capitan on both
  • on each system, cycled between each I/O on the device (eSATA, FW, USB)
  • tried using v1 of the Lacie RAID manager (the one that runs from an internet browser) that I found on an archived version of LACIE's website

Basically, does anyone have any suggestions on how I can configure this device into RAID 1? I have a working (but not advanced) understanding of RAID in general; so whilst I don't think this would be the case, are there any other methods of configuring RAID device controllers at the hardware level?

Many thanks for any help that can be given - I've been tearing my hair out over this for over 48 hours!

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  • You'll have to tear down the existing array first regardless. Make sure you have a backup of all the contents.
    – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
    May 18, 2018 at 16:47
  • What firmware is running right now?
    – music2myear
    May 18, 2018 at 18:12

1 Answer 1

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There is no indication that the Big Disk Quadra supports anything besides RAID 0, or that the RAID Manager is supposed to be able to manage it.

The marketing information available on this device only indicate RAID 0, and the technical information available does not reference any capability of other RAID features.

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  • Hi - thanks for the response. Whilst I maintain a 'where there's a will there's a way' attitude, I agree that what you state indicates that the device isn't capable of RAID 1. Just to check my understanding - it's not a case then that all RAID controllers are created equal, some are capable of one single mode only? Many thanks
    – Ali
    May 18, 2018 at 19:36
  • @Ali RAID controllers vary greatly in their capabilities. A controller might or might not support any combination of: JBOD, RAID levels 0, 1, 3 (with enough disks), 5, 6, 1+0, 0+1, etc.
    – Gordon Davisson
    May 19, 2018 at 18:50
  • You're not talking about a RAID controller in a computer though. This RAID controller only exists on the other side of a USB/Firewire or other connector, the methods of communication have been pre-configured in the device controller. It is entirely possible that RAID control communication methods have not been programmed into the device controller, and so without flashing the device controller with some third-party firmware to allow it to support management of the RAID controller, and then assuming the RAID controller is CAPABLE of the desired method, you're still out of luck.
    – music2myear
    May 21, 2018 at 16:02

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