G-RAID failed!

Hi!

My G-RAID with Thunderbolt (All Products: Shop Hard Drives, SSDs, USBs, & Memory Cards | Western Digital) failed. I contacted the support and they were really nice and they are going to send me a new drive as it’s inside the warranty period.

I was using RAID 1. My question is: when the new drive arrives is just a matter of plugging it in? How does it know it should copy from the “good drive” to the new drive and not the other way around? Also, what happens if I put a driver with different files? I am not sure if the drive they are going to send will be formatted for Mac. I don’t want to do anything wrong when the drive arrives. Has it happened to anyone?

Thank you for the help!

Thiago

Thiago,

What type of RMA did you set up. Did you get it done for the entire unit or just a single bare drive?

If it is for just a bare drive then when you get the replacement drive and you put it in the enclosure. The configurator will allow you to copy the good drive to the bad drive, it has prompts to do so. If you need help when you get the replacement drive you can always call in and be walked through the process.

Hi Rydia. Thank you for the reply.

Only the failed drive will be replaced. I had my unit set up to RAID 1. I asked the support and they said I can erase the drive before send. So I disconnected the good drive and turned the unit on with the failed drive and erased. I also used it with only the good drive one to see if the files were there.

With one drive only can I change to use JBOD without losing my files in the good drive? So when the new drive arrive I can have double capacity?

And for curiosity, what happen if I connect 2 drives with different files in them when the unit is configured to RAID 1? The unit ask what I want to do or do something automatically?

I have another RAID unit (another brand), I think I will use both like JBOD and use script to copy from one to the other every day, because if one drive fail again I don’t want the risk I lose something because I did something wrong. If it fails I will only lose the files from one day max.

Thank you!

Do not make any changes to the drive with the configurator or else you will erase the contents. If you transfer the data off the good drive then you can change it to whichever you want.

If you connect a drive after its been removed the configurator will tell you the drive is degraded and will request you to rebuild the RAID. You will get the option to copy the contents from one to the other so that they match.

Thank you again @Rydia! So quick!

I hope it was ok that I used the unit with only one drive (but I didn’t add or modified files), because I needed to erase it before send to support. Confidential files from work/clients.

One thing I forgot to say is that when I erased the drive it was blue again, the red light disappeared. I hope it doesn’t cancel replacement, because I am afraid to use it now too.

And sorry to ask a lot of questions, but Mac can encrypt disks. Can I use encryption with RAID-1? What happen if the disk fail and add a blank disk? It copies/recover normally or because is encrypted it can’t mirror if one drive is replaced?

You won’t cancel the replacement it is fine to do what you did. It is just best not to try switching to JBOD while waiting for the replacement. You can definitely do so after you have gotten it and transferred the data off somewhere safely prior.

You technically can encrypt it with their protocols but we don’t usually recommend it.