Thanks everyone for your replies... I'll wait for the new HDD to arrive before I do anything. But if rebuilding a RAID is really so shaky with the DNS-323, is there any point to use RAID1 at all in it? Wouldn't I be better off having twice the amount of storage, then? Of course that'd require me to buy one more disk to have a complete backup, but if I can't rely on the RAID for anything, I'd rather not waste the disk space on it.
One of the least mentioned benefits of a RAID1 system is the ability to make a backup of all
your data right before you attempt to recover from a disk failure.
If a disk fails (in RAID1) the data remains accessible. Most people see this as an advantage to
minimize downtime for any activities which rely on the data. However, since the data is still
accessible at the time of repair, you can take a 'up to the minute of repair' backup of your
data, right before you attempt to recover from the disk failure. This 'up to the minute of repair'
backup will capture any data that has changed since your last 'regular scheduled' backup (say,
once a night at 2:00am). This 'up to the minute of repair' backup will guarantee you have
ALL your data saved, in the event that something goes wrong with the RAID1 repair.
If a disk fails, in a non RAID1 system, there is no access to the data after failure and you
WILL lose any data that changed between the time the last 'regular scheduled' backup occurred and
the time the drive failure occurred.
The reason I choose to spend the extra money to run a RAID1 system, is not because RAID1 is my
backup, (I run nightly scheduled backups), and it is not because I can't tolerate any downtime. I
use RAID1 to guarantee that
ALL my data will be backuped and safe, before I attempt to repair
my RAID1 from a disk failure.
For me, that
IS the point of RAID1.
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Topic: Safe way of upgrading firmware? (Read 10725 times)