Query: RAID 1 Recovery - What happens when the card Dies?

[Wolfsbane2k]

Hey.

I'm trying to do some reading into RAID 1 systems, and what happens when a failure happens, but can't seem to get the answer to the question i want anywhere!

I know that typically when a RAID card goes down ( budget RAID 1 or 0 ) swapping the raided hd's over to a new card, even with the same chipset is sometimes unable to recover the diskset, and it has to be rebuilt. I believe this is especially the case with RAID 5.

Question:
Since RAID 1 is purely a mirror of another drive, is it possible to pull a working raid 1 disk out and stick it into a standard IDE channel and read it?

I've been using RAID 1 for 2 years and never had a problem **touch wood** as well as dvd backups, but it was started as a way to improve system redunancy without actually looking into the possible solutions - jumping in feet first and presuming it would solve the problem, so shoot me :P

[ashmedai]

Since RAID 1 is purely a mirror of another drive, is it possible to pull a working raid 1 disk out and stick it into a standard IDE channel and read it?

Never actually tried it, but AFAIK that's what would happen.

[Lazn_Work]

With software RAID1 (in windows server editions) than I know for sure yes it will work. (even with the boot drive) you may have to play with some .ini settings to get it to boot, but you can do it. (have had a MB die on a server, just moved the drive to a good MB and it worked)

With Hardware RAID1 I don't know, but if the RAID chipset MFG has any brains at all I would hope that it would work fine too.

Though what are the chances that the RAID card will die without corrupting the data too? If it tries to do any writing to the drives after failing, I would expect data corruption, even if the drive is physically OK.

There is no replacement for Backups.

==>Lazn

[ashmedai]

There is no replacement for Backups.

Amen.

[DougLite]

Also consider disk duplexing - 2 drives on 2 separate controllers. This does protect you against controller failure, at the obviously higher cost of buying 2 controllers. Many enterprise level controllers allow you to span arrays across controllers.