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Disk replacement from a raid0...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Deleted member 110753
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Deleted member 110753

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Hi guys,

I use a raid0 with 2 HDD but one of them is losing sectors.
As it's still working fine, is it possible to clone it in order to replace it, or have I to backup and restore all the raid?
 
Not “easily” in RAID 0. Pretty sure you’ll need to make a new array regardless. So you’ll have to back it up and “start over”
 
Raid 0 = 1 disk vol spanned across 2 Drives
If 1 drive fails/has problems then you lose the spanned Vol
your have to back up vol
then replace dying disk and either restore your files to new array (rebuild)
RAID 0 (also known as a stripe set or striped volume) splits ("stripes") data evenly across two or more disks, without parity information, redundancy, or fault tolerance. Since RAID 0 provides no fault tolerance or redundancy, the failure of one drive will cause the entire array to fail; as a result of having data striped across all disks, the failure will result in total data loss. This configuration is typically implemented having speed as the intended goal.[2][3] RAID 0 is normally used to increase performance, although it can also be used as a way to create a large logical volume out of two or more physical disks
for future recovery /security
Perhaps you should consider Raid 1

RAID 1 consists of an exact copy (or mirror) of a set of data on two or more disks; a classic RAID 1 mirrored pair contains two disks. This configuration offers no parity, striping, or spanning of disk space across multiple disks, since the data is mirrored on all disks belonging to the array, and the array can only be as big as the smallest member disk. This layout is useful when read performance or reliability is more important than write performance or the resulting data storage capacity.[13][14]

The array will continue to operate so long as at least one member drive is operational
 
Because when the Raid 0 array was built the new drive wasn't apart of the stripe array.
 
HiSpeed said:
A new disk cloned sector by sector, will not work properly with the other one, why ?
Click to expand...
You can clone your raid0 array to another raid 0 array if your mobo support having Two raid0 set ups! If it does not then you can clone your current raid 0 to a single drive then when you have the new raid0 drives you can clone from the single disk clone back to the new raid0 array! I have done it a million times.

My desktop runs Raid0 x4 and done it too many times and in the field on other PC's and have been doing this forever it seems like for the last 15+ years anyways.
 
Last edited:
kenkickr said:
Because when the Raid 0 array was built the new drive wasn't apart of the stripe array.
Click to expand...
OK, but do you mean the raid0 array register somewhere a special information about the HDD type/model, which one?
 
Just back it up. Then fix the array. No need to clone anything. With raid 0 you should have a back up
 
I hope you have a backup. RAID 0 is notoriously unreliable since you lose all of your data if even one HDD fails. It's the opposite of redundancy.

Once you've done that, replace the HDD with a brand new one. Trying to "fix" a HDD like that is a lottery and will likely have poorer reliability and lose you data.

You're going to have to rebuild your array regardless.

You can then continue using that HDD in non-critical applications.
 
Add a new drive and expand to a RAID5 array. When the failing drive is removed it will revert back to a RAID 0 array.
 
Back up the drive, you should have a backup anyway, and the replace the drive and restore the backup.

Steevo said:
Add a new drive and expand to a RAID5 array. When the failing drive is removed it will revert back to a RAID 0 array.
Click to expand...

A degraded RAID5 is not the same as RAID0. The degraded RAID5 will perform much worse.
 
I would start a Linux live CD and use dd to copy the contents of the array byte by byte and use the "no error" flag. If data is corrupted, you're already in trouble but, this is probably the best you're going to be able to do if a drive in the array is near failure. I would like to reiterate that once a drive in a RAID-0 fails, then you're done. There is no going back. So do yourself a favor and copy it byte for byte, errors and all, before you don't even have that option.
 
If it was me I would get an external drive, backup the array, pull the bad drive, install the new drive, rebuild the array, then copy the data back to the new array once partitioned. You'll be happier

Also hope your not throwing a brand new drive in with something years old because you will be down the same road.
 
HiSpeed said:
Obviously, I can backup/restore the whole array, but my question was to understand if a disk clone will work or not and why...
Click to expand...
You can't clone a replacement drive in an array. Well you prabably can but it will break the array. Not sure the exact reasons why it's just not how it works
 
Jetster said:
You can't clone a replacement drive in an array. Well you prabably can but it will break the array. Not sure the exact reasons why it's just not how it works
Click to expand...
You can but, you very well could be copying corrupted data to it if a disk is actually failing. Making an image of the logical disk (the array after it has been handled by RAID and exposed as a single block device,) is going to probably be the best you can do if a drive is on the verge of failing.
 
Thanks guys for your help !
Although it could be interesting for me to try, I'll not do it (no time to waste).
The more efficient is to backup the raid array and restore it into a SSD...
;-)
 
qubit said:
I hope you have a backup. RAID 0 is notoriously unreliable since you lose all of your data if even one HDD fails. It's the opposite of redundancy
Click to expand...

That statement makes a lot of assumptions. RAID0 isn’t any more or less reliable then any other RAID level. The raid health like any raid level is completely dependent on the health of the disks. Not to mention data, even at RAID 5 a failing disk can poison the entire array before failure.

You must have meant resilient and even in that case I’m not sure why you would meantion “redundancy “ since RAID at Any level should never be considered a backup so redundancy in the meaning you seem to be implying would not make sense. Resilient to failure IE not losing your data sure. But even in higher level RAID you need to replace failed disks and keep cold backup.
 
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