[HM] Volume Scheme, RAID questions

[Duane Murphy]

--- At Sat, 30 Sep 2006 15:07:05 -0700, Chris Beamis wrote:

>Hi,
>   I'm using disk utility, and I have two identical hard drives.  One  
>is the boot drive, and it has a single volume.  My hope is to do a  
>mirror RAID setup so that the second drive always mirrors the first.   
>When I try to follow the instructions in 10.4.8 help I get to the  
>point where I'm supposed to click 'create' but it is greyed out.  So  
>I thought maybe I need to format the second drive first.  

Yes, the drive must be formatted before applying RAID selections.

>I want to  
>format it identical to the boot drive, but when I click on the boot  
>drive, then the 'partition' tab, under Volume Scheme it says  
>Current.  But when I do the same for the second drive, setting Volume  
>Scheme to Current, everything else is greyed out, I can't type the  
>volume name or format or size.  The stuff gets ungreyed if, under  
>Volume Scheme I click on 1 partition, but then I'm not doing it  
>exactly like the boot drive.
>
>   Can anyone explain to me what the terms "Current" and "1  
>Partition" mean in this context?

Current is exactly what it says. It's just whatever the current
partition is for the drive that is selected. It's not useful to think
about it in terms of something that can be applied to another drive,
because current is about just the selected drive.

Chances are there is only one partition on your boot drive. You can find
out the sizes by clicking in the partition. Then you can press tab to go
through the other partitions. There maybe small unused space that can't
be clicked in that tabbing with show to you.

By the way RAID will simply use the smallest size of the two partitions
when you create the RAID. So as long as the second drive is formatted at
least the same size as the first you'll be good.

 ...Duane