The Mechanism
Just like any standard hard drive or SSD, individual drives in a RAID 1 array will eventually fail due to age, mechanical wear, head crashes, electrical shorts, or solid-state controller deaths.
The Impact on RAID 1
When one drive dies in a two-drive RAID 1 array, the array enters a "Degraded" state. Because the remaining drive holds an exact, independent clone of the data, the system continues to run normally, and zero data is lost.
- The Risk: Operating in a degraded state means you no longer have fault tolerance. If the second drive fails before the first one is replaced and rebuilt, the entire volume is lost.
