Two disk in RAID 1, one was offline, one has failed, now the volume is 'At Risk'. Am I safe?

Question

I have a RAID on two disk, one of them (Disk 2) was offline for some weeks, the other (Disk 1) has now the state 'Error'. I checked the S.M.A.R.T logs with some tool says I have RAW read error around 61 (Disk 1: WD20EARX).

After I bought Disk 2 back online, and reactivated Windows started synchronizing them.

After some time I ended up by the volume saying 'At Risk'. The Disk 1 has 'Error' state, the Disk 2 is just Online.

Question: Is the synchronization finished? Can I remove my Disk 1 with errors? How should I proceed to clear this?

Note: The RAID contains data only, no operation system.

Note: I let run CHKDSK /F /I /C /R on the volume (Disk 2 was offline) before starting to resync. It run thought over around six hours (it had fixed some bad cluster in some files).

Additional information: Win 10, Windows soft-RAID, RAID 1

Answer 1

To be safe there is just one option; backup, replace hardware and rebuild.

This is especially true if the data is of such dignity/value that you would be sorry to lose it.

RAID has this special feature to reveal hardware errors (e.g. comparing disks), that might go unnoticed quite long in single drive use.

For what it is worth, read the Backblaze disk reviews and build your own opinion on reliability. Sister models of your disks appears in the 2016-Q1 review, maybe some of the earlier ones too.

Note: A disk that has a detected fault will degrade (get more errors) with time, the rate of "new error appearance" will escalate. Plan accordingly.