Breaking a mirrored disk array in Mac OS X?

   Is there a way to break a mirrored (RAID Level 1) disk array,
created using Disk Utility in Mac OS X?

   We're running Mac OS X Server 10.3.4 on a first-generation XServe.
Following a physical move of this machine to the new campus Data
Center,a colleague found that a drive bay handle was left in an
extended state (see below).

   Now, Status Monitor, Disk Utility, and 'diskutil checkRAID' all
report that the RAID array is "degraded" - presumably, no longer in
sync.

   Before attempting to rebuild the existing array, do you happen to
know if is possible to simply 'break' the array, resulting in two
normal (non-RAIDed) volumes? RAID software from other OS vendors and
even third-party vendors for the Mac OS provides this feature, but
neither Disk Utility nor the command-line 'diskutil' utility seem to
offer this option.

Aron Roberts
Workstation Software Support Group

P.S. A Macworld review of the original XServe in November 2002
<http://www.macworld.com/2002/11/reviews/xserve/> noted:

>While mounting our test unit, we discovered a serious design flaw.
>When you're handling or working around the Xserve, it's very easy to
>bump the front of a drive bay, popping the handle out and disabling
>the hard drive. If you do this to the boot disk on a running Xserve,
>you get an instant system crash and possible data loss. The system
>lock doesn't currently prevent this, but Apple is working on solving
>the problem.

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Received on Mon Jun 21 14:22:34 2004