So how do I know the mirror is working?

MyBook 2TB for PC (XP), set to mirror.  Seems to be working great. The WD Drive Manager tells me the status is “healthy” for RAID1. Good.

Now, how do I know if the data is REALLY being written to the second hard drive?  I’d hate to wait a year or two and have a disaster, only to find out that the second drive is empty…:slight_smile:

Any advice?

thanks in anvance.

This is tedious, but you can turn off the drive, disconnect the power (this is important), then pull one disk out, plug the power back in, and turn the drive back on.  You should be able to see the data on the drive.  It will warn you that the drive you pulled is missing, but it should work.  Then turn the drive off, disconnect the drive’s power,  put the disk back in, and pull the other drive out.  Then reconnect the power and turn the drive back on.  If the data shows up, you know it’s all there.

Oh, and I almost forgot, you can only do this with RAID 1 (Mirrored).  If you try this with RAID 0 (Striped), you will lose your RAID and all your data.

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Well, tedious is better than nothing.  THANKS so much for this response.  I was hoping there might be a software solution, seems funny that there isn’t.

Yes, using RAID 1 in my case, so I will give it a try.

guess I’m just old-school that way; will feel better if I can see “proof” that my backup solution is really backing up…:slight_smile: