Queestions on RAID 1 data security

Zadok

Junior Member
Apr 25, 2005
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(1st 'real' post here!!)

I have RAID 1 enabled from BIOS using 2 SATA drives. BIOS disabled RAID and so win xp was writing to one drive for a few hours until I notice the sys clock was off. I had gotton one 'win32' error but did not think too much of it.

I then re-enabled RAID but without rebuilding the array, loaded win xp, and then "blue screen of death" as win tried to 'fix' everything. By that time, all was lost regarding the OS. I lost some configuration settings I failed to back up, and required several hours to reinstall OS and all the user files.

Question: Now I am wondering how secure RAID 1 really is? I really don't know how it works. Say a drive actually fails and RAID enters the mode of read/write to only one device, and then I use "rebuild." How does the controller know which disk is the 'good' mirror copy?? The ASUS tech rep said just "rebuild both drives." But in my situation, and the one I just described, one drive would have a few mb of data more than the other? How can I know it will copy from disk 0 to disk 1, for example??