I'm thinking of converting two of my drives to a mirrored array (RAID 1, correct?) and am wondering how it works in practical terms when a drive fails. Does the drive still appear as a disk in the OS as normal? Does it prompt you to replace the dead drive in some way? How do you replace them: do you simply stick a new one in and reconfigure it through Storage Management, or do you have to wipe both drives to reestablish the RAID? I currently use Synchtoy to keep folder pairs synchronized across drives. I'm looking into whether a RAID array would in fact be less or more hassle in terms of time and management.
Does the drive still appear as a disk in the OS as normal? yes Does it prompt you to replace the dead drive in some way? yep How do you replace them: do you simply stick a new one in and reconfigure it through Storage Management, or do you have to wipe both drives to reestablish the RAID? typically, you would replace the drive and then instruct the RAID management software to rebuild upon the new drive. The exact process depends on the software, but there's never a need to wipe both drives, the rebuild is done on the fly without loss of access or data.
I would go for the RAID 1 for ease of use as there is nothing after the setup you need to do, it writes the data to both at the same time, plus Synctoy can't copy some files (I use it for backups) The only disadvantage of RAID over Synctoy is that the other HDD when using Synctoy can be moved somewhere else for safety.
