[SOLVED] What Happens if a drive in a RAID-1 Fails?

[Kit McGuire]

I see the previous thread was closed, but I need some guidance here. I have an HP XW4600 with RAID1. The main HDD was showing an "error" so I bought another the same size (WD Blue 1TB @ 5400 speed). I pulled the bad HDD and put the new one in and turned it on. I hit the "Ctl-I" to get into the RAID config page and was immediately lost as to what I need to do. Long story short I ended up with both drives wiped. I had to reinstall Windows 7 Ultimate and ALL the software as I had. I did lose some data, but could have been worse. Where did I go wrong?

 

[USAFRet]

An actual RAID 1 controller should just notify you of a failed member, and then automagically rebuild once you replace the failed drive.
The only issue is the downtime while the array rebuilds itself.

And, as you've seen, the RAID 1 is not a backup. You should have an actual backup for your system.
And if you have an easily recoverable backup, you probably don't need the RAID 1 at all.

 

[popatim]

To answer your Topic question: It will keep on working and report the failed drive/degraded array.

To answer the question within the thread, When you entered the Raid bios witht he replacement installed, you should have been presented with a 'Degraded Volume Detected' windows and asked to select the port of the disk to rebuild it with. Select the disk and the rebuild starts (only disks not already in a raid would be shown on this 'select a disk' screen.)

 

[Kit McGuire]

To answer your Topic question: It will keep on working and report the failed drive/degraded array.

To answer the question within the thread, When you entered the Raid bios witht he replacement installed, you should have been presented with a 'Degraded Volume Detected' windows and asked to select the port of the disk to rebuild it with. Select the disk and the rebuild starts (only disks not already in a raid would be shown on this 'select a disk' screen.)

Once I installed the new disk and went into the RAID bios section it didn't see any degraded volume obviously since I replaced it with the new drive. I honestly saw no indications of any rebuilding, etc. I assumed it would just automatically "MIRROR" from the good drive, but it did not. I was given 2 options: Create a RAID or Delete the RAID. I looked at each option but saw no hint of what exactly to do. Obviously deleting so I could make a new RAID was the wrong choice. Now I need to find some kind of documentation surrounding that HP RAID section in the bios if I can find it. NOT very user friendly.

 

[popatim]

I'm referring to the Intel Raid bios, the Ctrl+I key combo during post. If you have an HP and have another raid setup section then you may have been in the wrong place or we are talking about two different things.

 

[Kit McGuire]

Exactly what I have here. Intel Raid bios. Only 4 options, Create, Delete, make NON-raid and Exit. Just wasn't sure what exactly to do after the new drive was installed with the Intel Raid bios step-by-step.

 

[popatim]

Right, the window i refer to only comes up when an array is degraded and tehr are drives present that can be used for the rebuild.
Like so:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrWMFleU-0w

 

[Kit McGuire]

Very good to see this! Thank you. I downloaded it for reference sake!

 

[RolandJS]

Please tell us you are going to begin and maintain backups onto external media. I think an earlier post indicated RAID is not a backup.

 

[Kit McGuire]

Been doing that all along which is why I mentioned my loss was not much. Only most recent data was lost, but no big deal.