Anyone familar with a RAID 1 array?...**Solved**

Forget the mac vs pc. thing. We run both mac and pc workstation AND servers at work. Guess what... both have experienced drive failures. Both have hot swappable drives. And both rebuilt the drive just as the array was set up to do.

There is a real difference between consumer and enterprise grade drives. And not just the price tag. If your data is critical to you buy the best drive. A enterprise device is best, but there are other "server" drives that are still better than consumer stuff. Don't ask how I know this... I'm trying to forget that day and the mess we were left with.

jplante4 wrote:

strollin wrote:

mrkoje wrote:
... Now what I would do is throw that windows computer away and get a Mac. Of course my opinion :)

Yeah, because if it was a Mac the hard drive would never fail, right? (NOT!)

Switching to a Mac in this situation would do nothing but lighten the OP's wallet.

You mac people have no idea how annoying you are when you come up with this "solution" to every computer problem.

Kind of like the old saying that those of you who think you know everything are extremely annoying to those of us who DO? :R

Sorry for the butt hurt, but Mac folks as a rule do have less problems than those who use Windows. But I worked with both systems, trained in computer network management and know each system has its good points and bad points.

jplante4 wrote:

strollin wrote:

mrkoje wrote:
... Now what I would do is throw that windows computer away and get a Mac. Of course my opinion :)

Yeah, because if it was a Mac the hard drive would never fail, right? (NOT!)

Switching to a Mac in this situation would do nothing but lighten the OP's wallet.

You mac people have no idea how annoying you are when you come up with this "solution" to every computer problem.

WOW! :D - I am chuckling of course reading these two responses. Keep in mind I did recommend that he just disband the array since it is a Raid 1 and call it a day or alternatively replace the bad drive which are both less costly as a solution.

96Bounder30E wrote:
All is well!........identified the "degraded" Hard drive matching the serial drive to the one in the software........replaced the drive with a new Western Digital from my local Micro center.......

The computer booted normally and I clicked on "Rebuild drive"........about an hour later it was finished imaging the lone HDD.........."System normal"


I have not yet checked out the failed drive but will do so........the computer was purchased the end of august 2012 with a 2 year warranty......it is now 4 months out of warranty......:S


Thanks for all the help!

Glad you got it fixed!

And it didn't take a "rocket scientist" or a "MAC" to fix it..

RAID controllers are expensive but when a drive fails (MAC folks take note.. YOUR drives can and do fail just as easy since they ARE the SAME drives used in PCs and you DON'T HAVE RAID as an option..) it nice to not have to lose data or start from scratch. :B

One nice thing about RAID,, when one of your drives fails. RAID may well kill bugs dead. Glad you figured it out..

FOr all.. the URL's I posted are good ones for computer help.. I had a problem with my Ham-Shack computer and Avast,, First responder linked me to a page that led me to the answer.. It was a bit more involved than the web page linked to suggested,,, but I got it fixed. Thanks to Dale (one of the forum experts) and the page he linked to. I am fairly good, but alot of my knowledge dates back to the days of DOS.. These guys are better at the modern stuff,, Together,, Very hard to beat the team (I fixed it using a combination of information Dale provided and old DOS knowledge).

All is well!........identified the "degraded" Hard drive matching the serial drive to the one in the software........replaced the drive with a new Western Digital from my local Micro center.......

The computer booted normally and I clicked on "Rebuild drive"........about an hour later it was finished imaging the lone HDD.........."System normal"


I have not yet checked out the failed drive but will do so........the computer was purchased the end of august 2012 with a 2 year warranty......it is now 4 months out of warranty......:S


Thanks for all the help!

Your RAID software ("FakeRAID") thinks that a drive is dead because it isn't answering. It may not be dead, but simply shut down for power saving and not telling the RAID. This is the sole remaining reason that consumer drives are cheap and enterprise drives are not.

It would help if you clicked on "manage" and posted a pic. My guess is that the first drive in your series is okay (drive 0), and that the second drive is not responding (drive 1). If this was my system, the first thing I would do is unplug the drives one at a time and plug them in somewhere else and see if it responds. Maybe an empty USB drive box? When I did this I would mark my drives.

If you keep your good drive and add a new drive, the RAID will copy your info to the new drive, probably asking you first. Before you do this you must make sure that you know which drive is which, and physically mark them. Once you okay the copy, if you have the drives mixed up it will copy the blank data onto your good drive.

Regarding the bad drive, maybe it really is dead, or maybe it's just underperforming in the RAID. So I would not throw it out without trying it in a variety of hookups.

When I used a 2-drive RAID 1 for backup in workstations, my minimum setup was 3 drives: 2 online in the RAID and 1 offline as backup. That way I had protection from accidental overwriting, for example if I restored a RAID from a blank drive (did that).

Two URL's where you may well find folks who know a lot more about RAID than I do (Been a long, long time since I looked into them)

http://forums.compuserve.com/discussions/App_Support/ws-appsupport?=

http://forums.compuserve.com/discussions/PC_Hardware/ws-pchardware?nav=messages

Both require registration (Same) or if you have an AOL name (AOL, AOL-IM, Compuserve or its IM, Netscape or its IM) you can use that

Also you can sub Netscape for Compuserve in the URL

Good people, very knowledgeable on this kind of stuff,, I am known as John from Detroit there, I will not be the one answering your questions though.

strollin wrote:

mrkoje wrote:
... Now what I would do is throw that windows computer away and get a Mac. Of course my opinion :)

Yeah, because if it was a Mac the hard drive would never fail, right? (NOT!)

Switching to a Mac in this situation would do nothing but lighten the OP's wallet.

You mac people have no idea how annoying you are when you come up with this "solution" to every computer problem.

Johno02 wrote:
Sounds like a problem with at least one of the drives. With a RAID system, some data may be saved, but best get an expert to try and recover it for you. RAID (redundant array of independent disks) was used to improve performance by spreading data across two or more drives, and to provide a level of redundancy for failures. If you are set up for RAID 1 Mirroring, then all data has a full backup, and you are in good shape. With just two drives, everything may be recovered, but like I said, you probably need help.
raid Mirrowing,

RAID 1 is a "mirrored pair", in a nutshell ALL DATA is written to BOTH DRIVES at the same time..

What you get is "mirror" copies of your data so ALL DATA is "saved" and intact. The Op does not require "help" to recover data and all he needs to do is identify the good drive from the bad one then replace the bad one.

On the next powerup the array will now "rebuild" automatically without any special tools or intervention.. The array manager does this for you..

If the array was set to RAID0 which is "data striping" without "parity" which makes a bigger virtual drive from two or more drives you then get into issues with potential loss of data due to the data being split across one or more drives (written as stripes).. Upside is you gain speed and drive size.. Downside of this is without parity and one of the drives fail you run a lot of risk of losing all data.

RAID5 requires minimum of three drives and uses data striping across the drives plus the added benefit of parity check data. RAID5 is used a lot on servers to increase access speeds plus the added benefit of parity which allows the array to rebuild in the event of a drive failure.

There are lot of other RAID configurations possible depending on the quantity of drives you have and the design of the RAID controller.