Raid Recovery Tips

How do I configure a RAID 1 volume on my OneTouch III Turbo Edition 1TB Drive in Windows?

The following are the steps necessary to configure a RAID 1 (mirrored) volume on your OneTouch III Turbo 1TB drive:

Currently only the OneTouch III Turbo 1TB (Terabyte) drives provide RAID 1 (Mirrored) support. Configuring a RAID volume is a data destructive process. It is strongly recommended that you backup any/all data on your OneTouch III Turbo drive before proceeding.

1. Double-click on the Maxtor OneTouch Manager icon on your Windows Desktop. This will launch the Onetouch Manager application.  
   If this icon has been removed…

I don’t need the redundancy of RAID five and want more usable disk space. Can I configure the NAS 4000 Series without RAID 5?

Yes, you can the NAS 4000 Series for JBOD (just a bunch of disks), spanned, spanned and mirrored, or striped disk configurations.

The Maxtor Onetouch III Turbo drive will be released as a 600 gigabyte (GB) RAID 0 model, and a 1 terabyte (1 TB, 1000 GB) RAID 0/1 model.  
RAID 1 can now be used with the OneTouch III Turbo 600 GB models with updated installation software.

Highlights

• User-configurable RAID solution
• Use RAID 0 for high performance disk striping or RAID 1 for automatic mirroring
• Up to 1 TB storage capacity
• FireWire® 800 for fast data transfer
• Oxford 924 chipset
• Pre-formatted for Mac; easily formatted for Windows®
• Available in RAID 0 only, and RAID 0 / RAID 1 (user configurable) configurations.

What does this mean?

Maxtor OneTouch III Turbo drives…

Warning:  Attempting to recover a RAID array using any of the
methods below can result in permanent data loss and damage
to the RAID array making data recovery more difficult.

OPERATING SYSTEM RELOAD
REBUILD RAID DRIVES
RUNNING THE CHECKDISK UTILITY
RECONFIGURE THE RAID ARRAY
USING DATA RECOVERY SOFTWARE
REINITIALIZE RAID ARRAY
REFORMAT DRIVES IN THE ARRAY

RAID data recovery is an extremely complex type of recovery
that requires much experience and expertise with how RAID
arrays work.  If you have a RAID failure, it is best if you do not
try to recover the RAID yourself using "quick fix" techniques or
"off-the-shelf" data…

Why does my WD My Book Premium II drive crash when I try to rebuild the RAID array?

Problem:
The Mac WD Drive Manager crashes when trying to rebuild the RAID array on the My Book Premium II external hard drive.

Cause:
Appears to be an issue with Mac 10.5 and 1394 Firewire. There are no known issues with Mac 10.4.x or USB.

Solution:
Connect the drive to the USB port, and re-run the WD Drive Manager to reconfigure the RAID to the desired array.

Question

A WD My Book drive connected to a HP Computer via FireWire does not format correctly after changing the RAID mode via the WD RAID Manager utility. This affects only the following drives: My Book Pro II, WD My Book Premium II, and WD My Book Studio I and II Edition.

Answer

Problem:
A My Book Pro II, Premium II, or Studio II Edition hard drive connected to a HP Computer via FireWire may not format correctly after changing the RAID mode via the WD RAID Manager utility. This issue only occurs on HP Computers running Windows XP that incorporate the Agere L-Fw3227-100 FireWire Chipset.

Cause:
This issue…

How do I change the RAID level of a My Book Premium II, My Book Pro II, My Book Studio II, or My Book Mirror Edition external hard drive?

The My Book Premium II, My Book Pro II, and My Book Studio II external hard drives are pre-configured for RAID 0 (Striped) mode for maximum capacity and accelerated performance. These products also support RAID 1 (Mirrored) mode for data protection, which dedicates half the capacity to mirror the data in both internal hard drives.

The My Book Mirror Edition external hard drive is pre-configured for RAID 1 (Mirrored) mode for maximum data protection. This drive…

Western Digital manufactures desktop edition hard drives and RAID Edition hard drives. Each type of hard drive is designed to work specifically in either a desktop computer environment or a demanding enterprise environment.

If you install and use a desktop edition hard drive connected to a RAID controller, the drive may not work correctly unless jointly qualified by an enterprise OEM. This is caused by the normal error recovery procedure that a desktop edition hard drive uses.

When an error is found on a desktop edition hard drive, the drive will enter into a deep recovery cycle to attempt to repair the error, recover…

All WD ShareSpace drives support Spanning, RAID-0 (Striping), RAID-1 (Mirroring), and RAID-5 (Redundancy with parity). Each RAID mode may or may not be available for usage based upon how many internal hard drives are installed in the enclosure.
Please Note: Based upon how the WD ShareSpace RAID is setup, the WD ShareSpace will show different available capacities:

Qty of 2 – 1TB internal hard drives:
• Spanning – 2TB
• RAID-0 – 2TB
• RAID-1 – 1TB
• RAID-5 – Not Supported

Qty of 3 – 1TB internal hard drives:
• Spanning – 3TB
• RAID-0 – 3TB
• RAID-1 – Not Supported
• RAID-5 – 2TB

Qty of 4 – 1TB internal hard drives:
• Spanning – 4TB
• RAID-0 – 4TB
• RAID-1 – Not Supported
• RAID-5 –…

Problem:
Changing from RAID-0 to RAID-1 on a My Book Studio II under Windows XP SP3 connected via 1394a (FireWire 400) fails to complete. Disk Management cannot be opened, and Cannot restart as well (Windows Freeze).

Cause:
The cause of this issue is unknown.

 Resolution:
To resolve this issue, please connect the My Book Studio II via USB or 1394b (FireWire800) and perform the RAID change again.