RAID 1 on Terramaster TD2 Thunderbolt questions

[juanriveros]

Hello!

I just bought a Terramaster TD2 Thunderbolt and set up on RAID 1 with Seagate IronWolf 8TB x 2
To test it, I copied a 10gb video file, took one of the disks out, and when I put it back it started to blink orange (one disk blinking orange, the other one blinking green). I did not make any changes to any of the disks whatsoever (no data was removed or added).

Question #1: How long will it take to "repair" the other disk? Is it the same amount of time when repairing the disk with almost no amount of data than when the disk full?

Question #2: If I turn it off during the "repair" process, will it have to start from the beginning when turning it back on?

Question #3: Is there any application that allows me to verify/monitor how much data/time is left on the repair process?

[TMzethar]

1. Estimated to take 16 hours
2. Will start from 0%
3. There is no related method.

[juanriveros]

Thank you for your timely response TMzethar.
Another question:

Considering the TD2 is an external unit with independent hardware RAID and has it's own power source, will it continue the repair process even if I turn off the computer? Or should the computer be on the whole time it's repairing?

[TMzethar]

This model does not support offline array synchronization, you need to keep your PC on and connected.

[juanriveros]

Thank you TMzethar,
You were right about the estimated time to repair, it took around 16 hours to complete and now both lights are green.

[supercooled]

Forgive my scant knowledge on Raid but Why did the unit need repairing when the drives were the same before you removed it for the test run? I'm under the assumption when a drive failed and or removed for whatever reason where a new drive is introduced, then the repair process is initiated to build the array once more.

And that's quite a substantial downtime as it appears to be writing / copying every block of the drive to the other.

I'm struggling to understand why the unit had to repair anything when the drives were the same but only taken out and returned. Perhaps you wanted to dust the internals for maintenance sake?

[juanriveros]

Your question is indeed interesting, and I have a theory on what happened.

Probably If you remove the hard drive with the RAID & Computer off for maintenance's sake or dusting the internals, it won't do the repair process.

But I must admit that after I removed the hard drive, I accessed the hard drive left in the RAID, I did not write any new file on it, just checked with windows explorer if the files where actually there, and I opened a video file. Probably what happened here is that windows or VLC (the player I was using) changed the video file somehow when I opened it, maybe some little information about the video file, maybe a metadata that says that the video was played X amount of times, I don't know, but as I read on other forums, just the slightest change in a hard drive can trigger the RAID to initiate the repair process.

I opened an images folder, and windows started to create thumbnails on every picture, I don't know if that makes any changes on the hard drive itself or just in the OS level. That would be interesting to investigate further.

So maybe this answer provides you with some clues, Mr. supercooled.