Googlebug,
You're wanting to use RAID as a disk cloning tool. That's not what its intended for, you need a cloning tool for that (or a RAID array in JBOD mode, where the individual physical drives are passed through to your computer to deal with instead of the RAID controller ).
RAID does what it says on the tin .... Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks.
The word Array being the important one. With RAID you have to adopt the thinking of logical drives, not physical ones.
The physical drives are not formatted, RAID operates in terms of data blocks, it doesn't care what the blocks are, it just uses algorithms to achieve redundancy of said blocks. The physical drives are intended to be readily disposable, i.e. they serve no design purpose other than providing the necessary capacity and redundancy.
The formatting happens at logical level.
Thus, on a half decent RAID array, what will happen is :
- If you pull out a live drive, it will assume the drive died (even if you turn off the RAID controller first, because it will keep track of drives in NVRAM). It won't ask you anything, it will assume and get on with the job.
- If you put in a "new" drive where the "dead" drive was, it will assume you've replaced a dead drive and will adopt it, format it and add it to the array. It won't ask you anything, it will assume and get on with the job.
- If you put a "new" drive into a previously unused slot, it will do nothing. But your only options will be to create a new logical drive or expand your existing logical drive.
Therefore, whilst you can configure mirroring (RAID1), you have to remember this operates on a logical drive level (i.e. the underlying drives are mirrored and you are presented with one logical drive). And the mirroring occurs within the confines of the RAID algorithm, and hence subject to common drive replacement protocols mentioned above.