New
#1
Questioning suitability of Win s/w RAID for data drives
Hadn't completed any substantial due diligence prior to deciding on adding RAID-1 to a friends computer. Their single internal drive which ran the OS and held camera images (overflow from filled up external HDD) failed. Now that they've experienced real loss I convinced them to build in redundancy. As their computer is predominantly being used to download/view camera image folders and turned off whenever idle (even for short periods of time) it seemed logical, keeping in mind they want 0% interaction required, to just mirror the data drives using RAID-1. We purchased an SSD and two 3TB HDDs. The two HDDs were installed using Windows software RAID via Disk Management.
After completing the hardware/software installations (incl. setting up RAID-1) and uploading all the salvaged and external data I "finally" dug a bit deeper into Win7 software raid. I wanted to verify mirroring but that's not as simple as peaking into the drive via explorer. I also now see Windows software RAID has no facility to warn of drive failure outside of manually opening and viewing status in Disk Management.
Now I question -- Has there been any recent MS Win7 updates that now provide for RAID drive failure notification (pop-up, action center, etc). In addition, since this is a data-only drive(s) is it safe to simply disconnect them in turn to view contents? I'm thinking there would be no rebuilding required as there should be no file changes (as opposed to an OS resident drive)? Will it break the RAID union and, if so, how easy will it be to re-pair the two drives?
Any info, opinions or suggestions appreciated.