Mirrored USB drive degraded - what to do?

[BlackHeart]

I still pretty new to the world of Freenas, and now I've run into my first drive failure.
Luckily it's one of my two mirrored USB boot drives, and from what I can understand I can replace it with a similar or larger USB key.

My questions are:
1: How do I identify which of the two identical USB keys is defective?
2: Could a reformat on a Windows bring it back to life or should I just replace it?
3: When it's been identified and replaced/reformatted what steps must I perform in order to reestablish the mirroring?

A screenshot of System-Boot-Status can be seen here:
http://imgur.com/o0VohVw

 

[Yatti420]

I would run it under a flash testing tool see if it produces errors.. Try camcontrol devlist .. or geom disk list see if that can get you the info you need to identify.. I just replaced both my sticks after backing up USB last time (they both could barely hold data - would produce errors).. I just popped in my new USBs and selected replace (they were pre-formatted FAT from the retail packaging)..

 

[Yatti420]

gpart list should also correspond to the long ID your seeing there..

 

[Mirfster]

Could a reformat on a Windows bring it back to life or should I just replace it?

Better to just replace it. With a cheap older SSD if you can ;)

When it's been identified and replaced/reformatted what steps must I perform in order to reestablish the mirroring?

Same steps as you would when replacing any other drive

 

[Arwen]

Some USB drives have activity LEDs. Thus, if you perform a scrub on your boot pool,
(which will hit your only working USB drive), any LED would light up the working USB
drive. Replace the other.

Strangely enough, I've done this is production data centers when dealing with less
experienced field support staff, (though with 2.5" or 3.5" drives).

 

[BlackHeart]

Thanks for all the advice :)

Some USB drives have activity LEDs. Thus, if you perform a scrub on your boot pool,
(which will hit your only working USB drive), any LED would light up the working USB
drive. Replace the other.

Very good idea - it worked perfectly.
And I guess there is something seriously wrong the USB drive, it didn't even register on my Windows PC - so I've ordered a new one (identical model).

Same steps as you would when replacing any other drive

And how do I do that? Once I've gotten the replacement drive of course.

 

[Mirfster]

And how do I do that? Once I've gotten the replacement drive of course.

See Section "8.1.10. Replacing a Failed Drive" in the Manual: http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas_storage.html?