RAID 1 question

[ubercal]

Hi All

Had a server crash the other day.The OS was setup as a Raid 1 with 2 HDDs (Mirror).When the server booted up it kept comming up with "Disk read error".Now it managed to boot up fine once i unplugged the faulty hdd.I was under the assumption that when u implement a RAID 1 the PC will continue to function correctly as the 2nd HDD takes over , without having to shut the server and take out the faulty hdd.

 

[dabouncer]

Thats raid 5 i think you are referring to where you can replace without a restart.

 

[repitah]

Well... that's what is supposed to happen. You remove the faulty HDD (live or powered down depending on hardware) and the mirrored copy continues to be usable (although the array status is degraded/not optimal).

There may be issues if you're using software raid 1, but no more really than hardware. What some people mistakenly do is setup a raid volume as raid 0 (I've seen this a few times... then it b0rkes, they come crying and I try not to laugh.

With hardware raid (and some driver-based, i.e Intel ESB2 and similar), usually you can just plug in a new drive while the system is live and it will rebuild automatically (always a good idea to have a hotspare as well)

 

[Ivork]

Hi All
When the server booted up it kept comming up with "Disk read error".Now it managed to boot up fine once i unplugged the faulty hdd.

It should have stayed up once the 1st disk crashed. On restart however, could be the controller had not realised yet that there was a problem with the disk and was still trying to boot from it, until you degraded the raid by physically removing the faulty disk.

Must be a rotton controller you got there.