Topic: Resoring a Raid1 software array after a disk crash

[Katchina'404]

Hello,

It's fine to know that you have a Raid1 array, and that your data are relatively safer that way, but what is provided to restore the system in the event of a drive failure ?  Will the system restart if it's the first drive that's broken ?  Will it even start if it's the second one ?
Once it's started, what's the way to go to rebuild the newly replaced disk ?

At first it seems like Raid is much more convenient than the hassle of managing tapes, but if there's no easy restore, then what's the point ?

I know a similar question has been asked before, but the answer didn't give much information.  Thanks for any help you may provide...

[cesman]

Don't depend solely on RAID to keep you data safe.  Yes, it can safe your bacon, you what happens it someone deleted a file yesterday and today they realize that they need it?  I'd suggest looking at at various rotatation schemes such as child, father, grandfather.  Sorry, I cannot answer your question on RAID as I have not tried it...yet!

[Katchina'404]

Well, it's only going to be a couple of users, and they will be responsible for their own mistakes.  My only worry is to avoid data loss in the event of a hard drive failure.  So I thought software Raid was the easiest way to go...

[Terry]

Hi,

Saw a previous message that said you just rebuild and restore from tape. This does not help if you do not have a tape drive though. I have not seen a message about restablishing a mirror as you can do in NT disk administrator.

For me the cost of the server is the same as 2000 server for five users.

The tape backups restore settings and files depending on the options you chose which are explained in the manual.

Terry

[Charlie Brady]

Katchina'404 wrote:

> It's fine to know that you have a Raid1 array, and that your
> data are relatively safer that way, but what is provided to
> restore the system in the event of a drive failure ?  Will
> the system restart if it's the first drive that's broken ?
> Will it even start if it's the second one ?
> Once it's started, what's the way to go to rebuild the newly
> replaced disk ?

All these questions and more will be answered in a HOWTO document which will find its way to this site. You can see some excerpts from an early draft at:

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=10221.msg38508#msg38508

Regards

Charlie

[Terry]

Hi,

I would love that question answered by E-Smith. If you have a large amount of data and settings you should just put another disk in and it should rebuild on reboot.

I have only seen a message that says install from scratch after you install the new disk. This assumes you have backups. So the answer would be to ensure you backup settings and data regularly. Raid is redundancy not backup.

Terry

[gollem]

Isn't RAID supposed to rebuild itself once you replace the faulty drive?