The Idiot’s Guide to Restoring a Failed RAID 1 Hard Drive
In my last post I recommended you use a RAID 1 drive like those offered by Western Digital and LaCie as the primary storage for your photos.
Taking that simple step will offer a huge measure of protection to most photographers.
But buying the drive is only part of the battle. You have to know what to do when it fails, because some day a light on that drive is going to start blinking, warning you that one of the drives in the RAID has failed, and you are back to having your files on one drive. When that happens, you need to take immediate action to restore protection of your files.
Taking Action
If you read the manuals, most RAID 1 drives have options to replace the faulty disk with a new drive, then let the RAID automatically rebuild. This means you have to open up your RAID case, find and replace the faulty drive, and then have the RAID rebuild itself. If you select the wrong drive, or make one error, it could destroy your entire RAID structure, thus compromising all of your files.
This solution is technically possible, but I think for most users it’s a process fraught with huge risks. I believe you are more likely to mess something up than fix it. That’s because you’re stepping into a mine field, and the manual is not a good enough map to get you through. One misstep means your data goes kaboom! Even experienced IT professionals can make costly mistakes here.
Furthermore, if the “good” drive fails during rebuild, you will lose all of your files.
I think there is a far simpler solution that minimizes risks, almost guarantees success, and is still cost effective. I call it “The Idiot’s Guide to Restoring a Failed RAID 1 Hard Drive”
First, do a backup so you have a current copy of the good drive. If you have multiple backup sets, update as many of them as you can. It’s cheap insurance.
Then, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO REBUILD THE DRIVE!
Take the simplest, safest approach:
1. Shut the drive down. This is the best way to prevent further drive failures.
2. Buy a new RAID 1 drive.
3. Copy all of your data from the old failed RAID to the new RAID 1.
The cost of a new RAID 1 drive is nothing compared to the cost of having a drive recovered by a professional data recovery service. Simply copying your data to a new RAID 1 drive is so simple that any digital photographer should be able to do it correctly 99.999% of the time.
If you can’t wait a 24 hours for a new RAID 1 drive to be delivered, then keep a spare on hand. A $220 drive waiting on your shelf is cheap insurance compared to the value of your files and the cost in time and money to restore them in a worst-case scenario.
That’s it! It’s really that simple. This is a solution that you, the average photographer can use...it just comes down to making the right choices.
This leaves you with one question: What do I do with my old RAID drive? Stay tuned for that in a future post...
Taking that simple step will offer a huge measure of protection to most photographers.
But buying the drive is only part of the battle. You have to know what to do when it fails, because some day a light on that drive is going to start blinking, warning you that one of the drives in the RAID has failed, and you are back to having your files on one drive. When that happens, you need to take immediate action to restore protection of your files.
Taking Action
If you read the manuals, most RAID 1 drives have options to replace the faulty disk with a new drive, then let the RAID automatically rebuild. This means you have to open up your RAID case, find and replace the faulty drive, and then have the RAID rebuild itself. If you select the wrong drive, or make one error, it could destroy your entire RAID structure, thus compromising all of your files.
This solution is technically possible, but I think for most users it’s a process fraught with huge risks. I believe you are more likely to mess something up than fix it. That’s because you’re stepping into a mine field, and the manual is not a good enough map to get you through. One misstep means your data goes kaboom! Even experienced IT professionals can make costly mistakes here.
Furthermore, if the “good” drive fails during rebuild, you will lose all of your files.
I think there is a far simpler solution that minimizes risks, almost guarantees success, and is still cost effective. I call it “The Idiot’s Guide to Restoring a Failed RAID 1 Hard Drive”
First, do a backup so you have a current copy of the good drive. If you have multiple backup sets, update as many of them as you can. It’s cheap insurance.
Then, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO REBUILD THE DRIVE!
Take the simplest, safest approach:
1. Shut the drive down. This is the best way to prevent further drive failures.
2. Buy a new RAID 1 drive.
3. Copy all of your data from the old failed RAID to the new RAID 1.
The cost of a new RAID 1 drive is nothing compared to the cost of having a drive recovered by a professional data recovery service. Simply copying your data to a new RAID 1 drive is so simple that any digital photographer should be able to do it correctly 99.999% of the time.
If you can’t wait a 24 hours for a new RAID 1 drive to be delivered, then keep a spare on hand. A $220 drive waiting on your shelf is cheap insurance compared to the value of your files and the cost in time and money to restore them in a worst-case scenario.
That’s it! It’s really that simple. This is a solution that you, the average photographer can use...it just comes down to making the right choices.
This leaves you with one question: What do I do with my old RAID drive? Stay tuned for that in a future post...
posted by Rich Seiling at
4/24/2009
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2 Comments:
Rich --
A brilliantly simple solution! I lost a RAID 1 in Antarctica last December! Both drives went down at the same time, though!! We managed the rest of the trip on a cute little On-the-Go drive by OWC, and were able to save our own data with DataRescue software when we got home. It was also an OWC RAID under warranty (so what??) but they did check it out and said, indeed, wow, both drives went down at once. How's that for a nightmare?
Lisa Strong-A.
I've seen it twice that both raid 1 drives fail within one day. That is probably because they are from same batch and close to identical so their life times are quite identical. I now have always tried to build my raid systems so that they have disks from different manufacturers. Then the risk of them failing at the same time is smaller.
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