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FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions - Knowledge Base

[Thunder3 RAID Station] How to replace a faulty drive in a RAID 1 set?

When a drive fails, the corresponding LED lights up red. If only one drive is defective and the RAID mode is set to RAID 1, the data can still be accessed but we recommend to first backup all data in a different location and then replace the faulty drive immediately. If more than one drive at the same time fails, all data is lost.

Method 1 (Recommended)

  1. Backup all the data from the good drive and store the files in a different location.
  2. Eject the drive, disconnect the Thunderbolt cable, disconnect the power adapter to turn off the device and then replace the faulty drive.
  3. Set the RAID mode to Non-RAID.
  4. Plug in the power adapter, connect the Thunderbolt cable to your computer and format the disks as two independent volumes.
  5. Eject the drives, disconnect the Thunderbolt cable and disconnect the power adapter to turn off the device.
  6. Set the RAID mode back to RAID 1 and re-assemble the case.
  7. Plug in the power adapter, connect the Thunderbolt cable to your computer and and format the disk a second time.
  8. At this point, you should have a brand new RAID 1 set and you can restore the data from your backup location.

Method 2

  1. Backup all the data from the good drive and store the files in a different location.
  2. Eject the drive, disconnect the Thunderbolt cable, disconnect the power adapter to turn off the device and then replace the faulty drive.
  3. Re-assemble the case, plug in the power adapter and plug in the Thunderbolt cable to your computer. The data is mirrored automatically from the good drive. During this process, the HDD LED pulses slowly. The time it takes to complete depends on the drive capacity.

Important

It's always best to keep a copy of your data in a second location. If anything happens to your RAID set, the data gets corrupted or the rebuild fails, you can restore the data from your secondary backup location.

When using the automatic rebuild function, please keep in mind that even if you have stored only a few files on the disk, it might take a whole day to complete the rebuild, because the time it takes to complete depends on the capacity of the drives. For this reason, we recommend using method 1 and starting from scratch.