I am an idiot, please help me out.

Cleeecooo

Cleeecooo

Cleeecooo

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I had a Dell XPS 420 (now my parents') and the HDD's were set up in RAID 0. The computer screwed up so i built a new one but kept the HDD's, RAM and CPU. I used THIS motherboard and everything was going well, until the mobo couldn't find an OS. I realised this mobo doesn't support RAID. I also have an Asus P6X58D-E, so could I plug those hard drives into my mobo and retrieve all the data without screwing up my data?

Please could you provide a true "idiots guide" on how to do this.

Thanks
 
Transferring a RAID0 array from one board to another isn't guaranteed to be successful. I've seen arrays move with no problems but also ones fail to move to seemingly identical setups.

You might as well try it but don't hold your breath.
 
get a different hard drive, (from any PC) and install windows.

Plug in the RAID0 hard drives and you can hopefully recover everything from them onto the other hard drive :)
 
Cleeecooo said:
Will this also work if my mobo doesnt support raid?
Click to expand...
No. :(

It's also highly unlikely to work even if your motherboard does support RAID, unless it has the same controller as the original. And even then BIOS/firmware differences would complicate the issue.

RAID 0 (or in fact RAID-anything) has no place in a home PC in my opinion - the benefits are dubious at best, and the potential disadvantages considerable.
 
CaptainCrash said:
RAID 0 (or in fact RAID-anything) has no place in a home PC in my opinion - the benefits are dubious at best, and the potential disadvantages considerable.
Click to expand...

Odd thing to say. I've used RAID 1 forever and its saved my bacon a few times with hdds dying etc.. Had it been stand alone, all my data would have gone bye bye. Even when i used RAID 0 a lot i never had problems and enjoyed the benefits of extra speed etc..
 
Justintime said:
Odd thing to say. I've used RAID 1 forever and its saved my bacon a few times with hdds dying etc.. Had it been stand alone, all my data would have gone bye bye. Even when i used RAID 0 a lot i never had problems and enjoyed the benefits of extra speed etc..
Click to expand...
Yes, but if you do proper backups to safeguard your data against *all* the potential ways in which you could lose it (not just a single hard drive failing), your RAID 1 is, errr, redundant. :D

Even RAID 5 lulls many users into a false sense of security IMHO - apart from not being a true backup, if a disk fails and is replaced, you'll be waiting for hours in a cold sweat while the remaining disks thrash themselves to death as the array rebuilds, all the while hoping that whatever factor took out the failed disk won't have affected any of the others.

RAID (the redundant varieties that is, not striping) is good for maintaining uptime, but that's rarely a major concern outside a commercial environment.
 
Since there's no onboard raid on your G41 board, you'll need to use a PC that has RAID instead. If the XPS 420 is still available, that'd be ideal.
Have you got the rest of a system to go with the Asus P6X58D-E? It's socket 1366 so your Core2 and DDR2 Ram aren't compatible. You should be able to plug the drives back in, set the SATA controller to RAID mode in the bios, and then it'll autodetect the foreign array. I've done it in the past between two different intel chipset versions (ICH7 -> ICH8), can't remember if I had to enter the Intel SATA bios after it picked up the foreign array, but I do remember it being painless.

Once you are up and running again, you'll want to backup your important data and then clone the RAID OS install over to a new single drive. Exactly how you go about this depends on what drives you have available. Ideally you have a drive (external USB or something) you can use as an intermediary.
  • backup important docs somewhere
  • create Imaging software boot CD
  • then take system image of the RAID array to the external drive
  • Boot into windows and confim that the backup image created succesfully
  • break the RAID array in the Intel utility, should be able to clear all config data.
  • remove one of the RAID drives
  • set SATA to AHCI in BIOS
  • Boot your Imaging CD and restore the image onto one of the drives that used to be part of the RAID
Acronis is the simplest way of doing this, but I do recall it being funny about RAID arrays. Hopefully the new versions are better. You could also use Windows backup if you're on Win7, There's an option if you boot from the Win7 installation CD to enter rescue mode and restore an image from a backup.
The way I know works for sure is with Norton Ghost on either a BartsPE or UBCD for Windows CD, but that's more complicated to set up. Feel free to google it though, there's plenty of help available.
 
CaptainCrash said:
Even RAID 5 lulls many users into a false sense of security IMHO - apart from not being a true backup, if a disk fails and is replaced, you'll be waiting for hours in a cold sweat while the remaining disks thrash themselves to death as the array rebuilds, all the while hoping that whatever factor took out the failed disk won't have affected any of the others.
Click to expand...

Heh, I've been there a couple of times, With an 8 drive, 7TB array. Been lucky so far, but it's a nail-biting couple of days to rebuild, hoping that you don't get another failure, or a power cut. Documents I keep in cloud storage nowadays, but a RAID5 makes sense for bulk storage of large files that it's undesirable, but not the end of the world to lose.
Half the stuff on there i'll probably never access again, but I keep it thanks to nostalgia over the time it took to download on my mates 512Kb ADSL connection a decade ago and transplant via 700MB CD-R's, then rename and organise properly by hand. Guess I'm a bit of a hoarder by nature.

I have recently built myself a second NAS machine so that I can keep Acronis backups and other higher priority stuff in two locations (physically separate buildings on the same plot, not perfect but should be safe from anything short of a meteor strike :D )
 
Last edited:
CaptainCrash said:
Yes, but if you do proper backups to safeguard your data against *all* the potential ways in which you could lose it (not just a single hard drive failing), your RAID 1 is, errr, redundant. :D

Even RAID 5 lulls many users into a false sense of security IMHO - apart from not being a true backup, if a disk fails and is replaced, you'll be waiting for hours in a cold sweat while the remaining disks thrash themselves to death as the array rebuilds, all the while hoping that whatever factor took out the failed disk won't have affected any of the others.

RAID (the redundant varieties that is, not striping) is good for maintaining uptime, but that's rarely a major concern outside a commercial environment.
Click to expand...

I've also got a remote NAS at another house and 30tb of storage at work at my disposal. I'm currently holding about 25tb of client data and about 5tb of my own data, RAID 1 has allowed me some peace of mind and time saved not backing up every couple of days.
 
Zarf said:
Since there's no onboard raid on your G41 board, you'll need to use a PC that has RAID instead. If the XPS 420 is still available, that'd be ideal.
Have you got the rest of a system to go with the Asus P6X58D-E? It's socket 1366 so your Core2 and DDR2 Ram aren't compatible. You should be able to plug the drives back in, set the SATA controller to RAID mode in the bios, and then it'll autodetect the foreign array. I've done it in the past between two different intel chipset versions (ICH7 -> ICH8), can't remember if I had to enter the Intel SATA bios after it picked up the foreign array, but I do remember it being painless.

Once you are up and running again, you'll want to backup your important data and then clone the RAID OS install over to a new single drive. Exactly how you go about this depends on what drives you have available. Ideally you have a drive (external USB or something) you can use as an intermediary.
  • backup important docs somewhere
  • create Imaging software boot CD
  • then take system image of the RAID array to the external drive
  • Boot into windows and confim that the backup image created succesfully
  • break the RAID array in the Intel utility, should be able to clear all config data.
  • remove one of the RAID drives
  • set SATA to AHCI in BIOS
  • Boot your Imaging CD and restore the image onto one of the drives that used to be part of the RAID
Acronis is the simplest way of doing this, but I do recall it being funny about RAID arrays. Hopefully the new versions are better. You could also use Windows backup if you're on Win7, There's an option if you boot from the Win7 installation CD to enter rescue mode and restore an image from a backup.
The way I know works for sure is with Norton Ghost on either a BartsPE or UBCD for Windows CD, but that's more complicated to set up. Feel free to google it though, there's plenty of help available.
Click to expand...

I tried the XPS 420, but it said that the drive is not bootable any more.
This is my new problem:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=18177523#post18177523
 
Justintime said:
I've also got a remote NAS at another house and 30tb of storage at work at my disposal. I'm currently holding about 25tb of client data and about 5tb of my own data, RAID 1 has allowed me some peace of mind and time saved not backing up every couple of days.
Click to expand...

Acronis backs up whilst i'm doing my own stuff - it works fine with me, but 5 TB will be much harder.
 
Download and burn a linux live CD. Ubuntu should do nicely here, if you're not sure where to begin with that.

Boot the dell from the CD with the two drives connected. See if Ubuntu can detect the drives - it could just be a system file has corrupted and that the rest of the data is still there.

Connect an external USB drive, do an epic copy & paste job, ...., profit!

Then back up your data again. Remember the 0 in RAID-0 stands for how many files you'll get back if something goes wrong with it.
 
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