How to verify if my Raid1 is working, after how to recover?

[AngSg]

Hi! I have been using the Buffalo DriveStation Duo on Raid1

 

Recently a portable harddisk crashed and prompted me to be a little more worrying on my drives setup.

I have been using the DriveStation Duo with no issues so far.

I installed the accompanying software onto a PC, connect it to drive and change the raid setup to raid1 mirror.

 

I use the DriveStation mainly to backup work from my Mac labtops.

On Mac, i see the Drive Station as ONLY 1 Drive with 1TB in total. I had always assumed the 2 x 1TB on the DriveStation had been such that one is used as a full backup as what i wanted.

Now the Question:

1.How can i verify that indeed both drives are working and have a full set of duplicate data across them (From a noob point, couldn't 1 drive been spoil and disconnect, and i am happily thinking that it is on raid??)

 

2.And in the event of failure of one of the drives, how do i know it, and how can i recover it?

I tried to google it : http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=2024.0">http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=2024.0

and it seems that different product and manufactor have different ways of recovery....OMFG and i told RAID1 is simple and universal...=(

 

Also although i am using the Buffalo DriveStation Duo, it is NOT the one on the website:

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/desktop-hard-drives/drivestation/drivestation-duo-1">http://www.buffalotech.com/products/desktop-hard-drives/drivestation/drivestation-duo-1

Preheps its the older ver, mine had only USB2.0 but had firewire connections, also "The drives are easily replaced by sliding them into their bays behind the removable front panel" I am almost pretty sure that this is not the case.... ( cause i had wanted to try and unplug e drives and connect to my desktop to see if  i can see data on both drives)

Since we are on this topic,

My friend have the exact DriveStation Duo and had RAID1 it using the below method:

by bdegrande 

Feb 17, 2008, 07:55 PM

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=434391" target="_blank">http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=434391
In short by using the RAID function in diskutilies on Mac

 

3. Am i correct to say that by using the default software i am setting up a hardware raid setup whilewise my friend by using the diskutilites is  using a software raid? and with the following differences:

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/raid-hardware-vs-raid-software.html" target="_blank">http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/raid-hardware-vs-raid-software.html

In short the hardware raid1 is faster.
All else the same i would then have prefer to use the RAID function in disk utiilies and i see that one can remove the raid setup and then tata, you have 2 drives appeared with exact info on both.....

That all, sorry if parts of it sounds stupid, just that with a failure on one drives i am getting ready phobic.....=(

Thanks