Buffalo Forums

I have an LS-WVL Linkstation Duo which currently has 2 3TB drives in it mirrored (raid 1), call them drives 'A' and 'B':

---------
| A | B |
---------

I would like to buy a third 3TB drive (call it drive 'C'), pull one of the current two drives out ('B') and store it offsite in a fireproof container, place 'C' in and rebuild the mirror... so far so good:

---------                                                        ----
| A | C |                                          Offsite: | B |
---------                                                        ----

Six months later I would like to take drive 'A' out for offsite storage and place 'B' back in it's place to rebuild the mirror:

---------                                                       ----
| B | C |                                         Offsite: | A |
---------                                                       ----

The problem I see is that in the procedures for rebuilding the mirror it says that the new drive going in must be blank or there may be problems... so in this case drive 'B' will have array data on it from 6 months ago... so, what is the best way to erase the data before plugging it in, or will the array be smart enough to use 'C' as the master when it rebuilds the mirror?

Thanks

Bump

You plug it in to a pc using a sata dock or however you see fit and format the drive and then delete the partition and leave it partitioned. OR you can buy a external USB drive and just back up to that every once a week or buy 2 and switch them out every 6 months. i would rather mess with 2 external drives then 2 internal drives. its much more ideal as well.