I used Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) in a multi-step process to replace one of the disks in my RAID array, and it worked like an absolute champ!

I used CCC twice in the process, once to clone the existing RAID drive to an external drive, then the second time to clone the external drive back to the new RAID drive. I read through the documentation and searched his forums for “RAID” before I got started, but really I didn’t need to.

While running from the internal RAID drive, I quit everything that was running, mounted the CCC disk image, launched CCC and started the clone to the external drive with all the default settings. I think this clone took 4-5 hours, but I went to bed before it finished so I’m not entirely sure. In the morning, there was a little dialog that told me the clone operation had completed successfully.

I set the external drive as my boot drive, and restarted. Everything worked as expected. I started MySQL and Apache and tested that my web apps were working. I opened a few documents – all was good. I then shut down the Quad, replaced the internal drive I wanted to swap out, and again started from the external drive.

I used Disk Utility to create a new RAID array with the internal disks, then mounted the CCC disk image, started CCC and set it up to clone from the external disk to the internal RAID array. This time, the process only took ~45 minutes or so; when I got back from my workout, it was done.

I set the startup disk to the newly cloned RAID array, rebooted, and that was it! I’m back up and running on my internal RAID array – no muss, no fuss.

I quite happily sent Mike (the CCC developer) a $20 donation.