Question about a RAID 1 Array

[AZGamer]

Right now I'm running a Raid 1 Array off of a Promise controller built into my ASUS motherboard. Recently, one of the drives in the mirrored array was heard making the dreaded click of death, and soon enough on boot the Promise controller told me the array status was critical and only one drive was accessible. Luckily, since it's a RAID 1 array, that one drive still has all the info on it.

My question is, if I were to buy a drive of teh same make and model, could I rebuild the array without losing all my data?

 

[sharkeeper]

Yes you can.

When this happens, I prefer to buy TWO new drives, create and array with just those and connect the one (good) old drive to the IDE on the mainboard and ghost it over.

Cheers!

 

[AZGamer]

They're MAXTOR SATA drives, so it's rather expensive to get two new ones.... is there any way to fix it by only buying one replacement?

 

[AZGamer]

Anyone know?

 

[mauiblue]

On my Soyo mobo, the RAID BIOS allows me to "mirror" the drive that is still working to a new identical drive on a RAID 1 array. The RAID BIOS also has a RAID array feature called "JBOD" (Just a Bunch Of Drives). I didn't specifically find out what this is all about, but I assume you could use drives of different capacities and it would combine the capacities. Good luck.

 

[nageov3t]

of course. that's the entire point of having a RAID1.

it should just be a simple matter of replacing the dead drive, going into the RAID config, and hitting the "rebuild" button.

 

[imported_Bunter]

Both mauiblue and loki are right. You can buy any drive you want, equal to or larger than the current drive. It will become the same size as the current drive, though, when you mirror it.

With the Promise controller, I think you can simply select "Rebuild Array", it will display the existing array and it will guide you through the rest. Just be sure it is copying from the existing drive to the new drive and not the other way around.

That controller may have an "Auto Setup" option, which will work fine, too.

 

[sharkeeper]

Like I said previously, you can do it with one disk and it will work...

Sometimes you get lucky and that works. Sometimes you don't and a month later the other disk craps out.

Cheers!

 

[AZGamer]

What's the easiest way to figure out which drive it is that's dead?

 

[nageov3t]

Originally posted by: AZGamer
What's the easiest way to figure out which drive it is that's dead?

whichever one is bootable by itself should be the dead drive. alternatively, the RAID controller probably has the drives labeled as 0 and 1. you could check which drive is showing as failed, disconnect one of the drives, and go back into the controller and see which drive is missing.