detecting bad RAID disk

[Mark Copper <mcopper@titaninterface.com>]

Dear Users,

I have an Intel machine on which I installed software RAID 1 using a
Knoppix trick back in January of last year:

# uname -a
Linux deneb 2.6.15 #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Jan 5 18:12:48 EST 2006 i686
GNU/Linux

The machine suffered occasional kernel panics which, upon removal from
the data center where I colocated it, I have not been able to reproduce.
However, I do notice occasional "hesitations" involving disk writes that
I felt were somehow related to the panics.  There was also a post to
kernel.org at the time where in a similar setup kernel panics were
traced to a bad hard disc.

So, I'm thinking simply to replace both hard drives.  

Is this foolish?  Is there a better approach not requiring special
equipment to diagnosing the problem?

thanks.

Mark