I am using a 2-drive case with RAID-1. I did some simple testing by writing to the drive, and took out both drives for inspection: files are there in intact. Great.
Now if one drive dies I still have the other one. Great.
My question is, how do I use a 3rd drive and rebuild this RAID-1? Keep the good drive in the case and just insert the 3rd drive, and the case SHOULD get the data across?
According to the case manual, I need to press the reset button to get things going…. I’m afraid this will also erase the good drive!
Taking out drives for testing is a no-no unless you're very careful.
If you hook up any drive to Windows it'll write on it and thus your drives aren't the same anymore. If you RAID controller (or software) doesn't catch this you now have an inconsistent RAID config.
As mentioned, if a drive dies, you just need to take it out and replace with a new one and start RAID rebuild. The vendor should have a guide on this with detailed steps.