Question about RAID 1

dark_hag666

dark_hag666

dark_hag666

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Is a disk from a RAID 1 array readable on its own; even on a completely different controller?

I.E, could I take a disk out of a RAID 1 array from one computer; and transplant it into another computer as a standalone disk and still be able to read the contents?

Or would a second RAID 1 array be needed in the second machine?
 
nope, the controller has to be identical, even then there is a chance it wont be readable. Ive had success in the past with identical raid controllers though
 
Thanks, anyone else got experience with this?

Do RAID controlers write anything to the drive that will only make it readable to them?

In my opinion I can't see any reason why it wouldn't work, the contents of the drives in RAID 1 are identical; and as far as I know the controller just writes the same to both disks, without adding anything of its own.

Can anyone confirm this?
 
Interesting question and I'm not sure of the answer. I know that Windows mirrored volumes are precisely that - exact copies on each disk and they can be moved without any problem. It's controller based RAID1 I'm not so sure on. The last time I played with RAID1 seriously was about 6 or 7 years ago and that was creating multiple, identical machines all with a RAID1 array so install one and then put one disk into the next machine and rebuild both arrays. Doing that the array config was definitely stored on the drive because that's how I configured the arrays - the controllers read the config info off the drive. Now whether that is a) controller dependent (these were Adaptec based SCSI RAID machines) or b) going to make the drive unreadable to another controller I don't know.
 
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