Offsite backup of G-RAID removable

[Chris_RGB]

I am using G-RAID with Thunderbolt 2/USB 3. P/N: 0G04085

Now that the RAID 1 array is intact with all my data, I would like to create and off-site backup. I plan to use the following technique and I am curious if this is the correct approach? Comments and suggestions welcome.

1. Remove and replace one of the 2 drives with a cold-spare. Probably the lower drive.
2. Allow the new drive to rebuild off the 1st drive (RAID 1).
3. Take the drive that was removed to an off-site location for storage.

My plan is to exchange the lower drive every 3-6 months with the goal being to ensure I have a relatively current backup of my systems in a 2nd location in the event of fire or theft. Is this a good plan and are there any pitfalls to this approach?

Thank you

[Rydia]

@Chris_RGB,

This will work, I have spoken to multiple customers who already use this exact technique to off-site their data.

[bubbowen]

Yup, sounds like a perfect idea.

Any idea which type of extra drive you are going to use? Considering purchased the 20TB model and need to know a compatible 10TB drive to purchase separately.

Thanks!

Bub

[john_andrews]

I am just implementing this now. I have a G RAID with 2 10TB drives, and a spare 10TB drive. After building a data set using RAID 1, I swapped out one of the drives with the spare. The red LED on the front of the G RAID enclosure has been lit constantly now for more than 48 hours. Any idea what is going on here? Thanks.

[Chris_RGB]

Be very careful. When I replaced the lower drive with a cold-spare and did a rebuild using the G-RAID configuration utility, the process failed. It ended up destroying the data on BOTH drives in the array. Luckily, I was able to remove BOTH (now trashed) drives and put the original mirrored drive back into the chassis ALL BY ITSELF and was able to recover my data from the original mirrored drive.

Because I am 100% certain that I performed the correct process for rebuilding to the cold-spare, I cannot trust this process and have had to return the raid array and cold-spare for a refund.

Edit: The configuration utility claimed that the process was successful, however the disk would no longer mount. The error after the “successful” rebuild was something like “The disk cannot be read by this computer. Would you like to initialize it?” I did NOT attempt to initialize as this would erase all the data. After monkeying around for an entire day, I resorted to my solution of removing both disks and placing only the original mirrored drive back into the chassis (as noted above).