I have a RAID-1 system on my server: Hard Drive Mirroring. Due to a recent horror story (see below) I, as sysadmin of a dot com, need to quickly and easily find out if BOTH of my drives are working. I have a Red Hat Linux 7.3 server for Web services, and SQL Server 2000 (from the "dark side"), both running RAID-1, each with 2 SCSI drives. AND my boss won't let me take either machine off-line for diagnostic/routine maintenance.

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The story: My brother inherited a RAID-1 server at his new job. He worked for 6 months updating his company's FAQ system, making it more user-friendly. Didn't back up his work. Uh-oh.

Comes a time his boss says, "Put more memory in the server." Shoulda told IT to do it. But he got the job. He turns the machine off, installs memory, reboots, and ALL HIS WORK WAS GONE!!!

Seems that one drive had failed before he even came to work there, and the person in charge of the machine didn't recognize the error message. Upon re-boot, the 'failed' drive, which had had time to cool off, decided it was well again, and updated itself AND the other drive with data that was over one year old!

Moral of story: ALWAYS back-up your work, OFF LINE and (whenever possible) OFF-SITE!!