How can I confirm Fast Mirror Rebuilds rebuilt my entire mirror volume?

Fast Mirror Rebuilds are so efficient that users often wonder whether their mirror volumes were completely rebuilt. When a 2TB volume rebuilds in just 10-20 minutes, it’s natural to question whether all the data was properly synchronized.

Fast Mirror rebuilds work with all SoftRAID redundant volumes, including RAID 1 (Mirrors), RAID 4, RAID 5, RAID 1+0. Once a volume has been fully rebuilt (or validated), future rebuilds use our Fast Mirror Rebuild technology to enable amazing fast rebuilds when a volume becomes out of sync.

What is Fast Mirror Rebuild?

SoftRAID’s Fast Mirror Rebuild technology only copies the blocks that have actually changed since the mirror was last rebuilt, rather than copying every block on the drive. This dramatically reduces rebuild time while ensuring data integrity.

How to verify your rebuild:

You can confirm the rebuild was performed correctly by using SoftRAID’s Validate function. Validation is a background task that checks every sector from each disk in the volume to ensure all parity data is identical. SoftRAID will display the “number of blocks updated” in the volume tile. You can continue using the volume normally while SoftRAID validates it.

What to expect during validation:

• HDDs (rotating media): There should be no sectors needing an updating after a rebuild. All data blocks should already match.
• SSDs/Flash media: You may see multiple blocks being updated during validation. This is normal—flash drives use TRIM technology that constantly moves data around to optimize performance and wear leveling, so some blocks may have shifted since the rebuild.

Learn more: What happens when I validate a mirror volume?