# Snow Leopard install on a RAID stripe 0 Array



## screature (May 14, 2007)

I am posting this so that others will not have to go through the frustration that I just did over the last day and a half.

I bought Snow Leopard to install on my software RAID 0 array ( 2 x WD Raptor drives).

I fully backed up my Leopard install to an external drive using SuperDuper. Standard procedure. Then when I tried to install Snow Leopard by clicking the install icon it wouldn't see my striped array (called Keji) as a possible drive to install on. WTF??!!

Sooo... how do I get around this I thought... Hmmm.... I know (I thought) I have a USB dock and a few extra drives kicking around, so I will install Leopard on it and upgrade to Snow Leopard there and then clone it over to Keji (the RAID array) using SuperDuper. This should work right... well sort of. Everything went according to plan... did the installs and updated everything (including 10.6.2) fired up SuperDuper it saw Keji and I cloned it over. Snow Leopard was now on the striped array Keji... only problem it wouldn't boot. It would get as far as the Apple screen with the spinning wheel, which proceeded to spin for far too long and then the Apple logo was replaced by the Do Not Enter symbol (you know the circle with the line slashed through it. Double WTF?????!!!!!!

So now I am really stuck. So I went up stairs and to my MacBook Pro and searched the Support Discussions on the Apple website to see if I could hopefully find some answers to get around this... luckily I did, here is the thread:



> Topic : Mac Pro with software raid and upgrading to Snow Leopard
> 
> Posts: 1
> From: Colorado
> ...


So if anyone wants to install Snow Leopard on a RAID array stripe 0, put your Snow Leopard disk in, let it mount and *don't click on the install icon*. Just close the installation window go to Startup Disk in Preferences and choose the Snow Leopard disk as the boot disk. Then when the system starts to re-start hold down on the "C" until you get the install window. Then when the available drives to install on show up voila, the RAID array is there... from there everything runs as it should.

Thank God for Apple Support Discussions!!! :clap:

Apple should have this noted somewhere but they *don't*. Not too happy about that.

Now that everything is up and running so far so good with Snow Leopard, everything (except Firefox) is a lot snappier.


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## jamesB (Jan 28, 2007)

I feel your pain...
Been there-done that.
You could have avoided all the frustration if instead of clicking on 'Install" clicked on the "Utilities" button.
Apple could, and should have made these options clearer.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

jamesB said:


> I feel your pain...
> Been there-done that.
> You could have avoided all the frustration if instead of clicking on 'Install" clicked on the "Utilities" button.
> Apple could, and should have made these options clearer.


:lmao: How did you figure that out?


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## jamesB (Jan 28, 2007)

Actually it was quite easy.
Click the Utilities button then click Restart, this will get what you need to install with any other options.
But then, I'm sure you knew that.


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## screature (May 14, 2007)

^^^^ Wish I had. How did you know? There certainly wasn't any indication/documentation from Apple that doing this would accomplish what was required for installing Snow Leopard on a RAID disk.


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## jamesB (Jan 28, 2007)

Oh I didn't know, at least at first.
I went that route so I could get to Disk Utility, I wanted to repartition and do a clean install.
But I do use a FW raid external for my backups, and it showed up as a possible target for installing SL.
There has been a lot of confusion in regards to SL installations,
different approaches to "Archive and Install", which OS's can be upgraded (Panther-Tiger-Leopard, etc.), the need or not for a previous OS to even be present before SL will install, and many more I'm sure.


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## CrownECakes (Jan 31, 2011)

Sorry, I know this post is old but - I have an older mac that I've avoided upgrading because of this very issue. 

screature, jamesB - Was your data and all your applications safe after this install or, did you perform a fresh install from that disk?

Can I avoid all this nonsense by just skipping 10.6 and going to 10.7?

I'm currently running 10.5.8 on a 2 500GB RAID stripe array.



_________
Mac Pro Quad 2.8 GHz


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