Can I change the stripe size without loosing data?

Cheers smids, now to wait until it all arrives. When it does arrive, is there anything special I need to do as it's not an off the shelf solution.
 
Mint_Sauce said:
Cheers smids, now to wait until it all arrives. When it does arrive, is there anything special I need to do as it's not an off the shelf solution.
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Depends on the motherboard, not much other than adding it to the sytem. What do you have? It's an 8x PCIe, but some motherboards have their PCIe slots hardwired for graphics. Hopefully yours is a decent one....
 
I have an Abit IP35-Pro so should be ok?

The guys I bought the cables from contacted me and said they didn't have two of those cables and recommended these instead:

Multilane HOST to 4x SATA DEVICE FanOut (SFF8484 to 4x SATA)

So, when it arrives just plug it in, plug the hard drives in and the motherboard and PERC will get on with booting in to Vista without fodisking my drives or anything? :D
 
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No idea on the motherboard I'm afraid. Not had an intel chipset board for a good number of years now. On the setup, well, you'd need to go into the RAID BIOS, and setup the volumes. I haven't used my card in a looong time though as I couldn't fit everything in with my watercooling on my motherboard (my own desktop), so someone else would need to advise you. I have never actually used it for RAID5. I bought it, realised it wouldn't fit in my computer, set it up in my server, then ran out of money for the hard disks :p. I only ever had one drive connected to it, and this was just testing it out. Since then, I have reconfigured everything, though I keep it for when I will no doubt want it in the future for my mailserver.
 
1 drive raid array! I suppose you could errr.... partition the drive in to 30 disks then raid them :D :P (jk!)

Should be interesting when it all arrives, I can see a nervous few hours ahead..
 
Ok, I got my Perc 5/i but it didn't work in my motherboard. After some investigation it seems only one person online out of the many has it working but he has disappeared. Anyway, after some looking about I came across a page which showed covering pin 5 and 6 on the Perc card will allow it to work in P35 mobos and also some X38 ones.

http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?t=90200

I've done that and it's now booting but the card hasn't been picked up in Windows. Do I need to enable the second PCI-e slot in the BIOS or something?
 
Can't install the drivers as the card isn't picked up at all. It also doesn't show anything in the bios boot sequence before booting Windows, that's why I was wondering if the second PCI-E is disabled.

EDIT: Are any led lights on the card as the one I have has nothing on it to indicate it's on and functioning. I thought I noticed one or two of the tiny leds on the board when installing.
 
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Do you have a setting in the BIOS for the VGA order for the PCIe slots? Sounds bizarre but I recall having to flip that about to get my RAID card going in a PCIe 16x slot on the old 939 board.
 
Well, I've found what the problem is...

Inspecting the card closely I've found that a few of the tiny resistors are hanging off the card hanging on only by the tiny threads of the circuit. It's a refurb job for sure but obviously a very bad one. Bit annoyed as this could have shorted or damaged my mobo.

Back to the seller I go, hopefully he won't try and palm me off... :(

http://www.henleyb.com/webstuff/perc_pcb.jpg
 
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yeh there's a green light which flashes when the card is working.

looks like someone was impatient when removing the card, seller should have tested before sending.
 
Is that typical damage for someone removing the card from a blade or similar? Just want to know incase he comes back saying the card wasn't like it to begin with. I'm a bit suspect as it was listed as a buy it now with another 5-10 units available. The listing guaranteed the unit worked and had been tested which is why I'm not convinced he's going to admit liability.
 
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it looks like it has caught something whilst being pulled out doesn't it, it was probably working until then which is why he might not have realised......unless he's trying to pull a fast one.

i don't know how paypal are with regards to damaged goods if you used them, but generally i think the odds are pretty good for buyers.

bummer dude i hope it works out, worst case scenario ...even if you buy another you've still saved loads of cash for a £400 retail hardware raid card.
 
I guess so, still it sucks that I waited over a week for it to arrive and now no doubt it's going to be at least anohter week of working slow. I'm tempted to buy another from someone else off the bay so I can get up and running and see how this one pans out. Problem is if he offers to swap it for another I end up with two cards.

EDIT: Thought sod this and bought one from Rome. I guess I can sell the second one if it comes to it.
 
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The seller apologised and is sending another which is a great relief. Looks like I'll end up with two now. Hopefully be able to sell pretty near the price I paid.
 
New Perc card turned up this morning \o/

Can I simply migrate over to the new card from my onboard software Raid 5? If I plug all my hard drives in to the card and configure it to RAID 5 will it pick up and see all my data and carry on like normal?

I want to make sure it's not going to see 5 hard drives and think it can wipe them, starting a new Raid 5. :o
 
Mint_Sauce said:
New Perc card turned up this morning \o/

Can I simply migrate over to the new card from my onboard software Raid 5? If I plug all my hard drives in to the card and configure it to RAID 5 will it pick up and see all my data and carry on like normal?

I want to make sure it's not going to see 5 hard drives and think it can wipe them, starting a new Raid 5. :o
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It would wipe them and start the initialization of your array. Software and hardware RAID are NOT compatible, very much tied to the controller.
 
Just as well I checked :eek:

Card has just been installed, worked with the tape trick over pins 5 and 6. Now to flash it to LSI and re-instal Vista then move all my data back over..
 
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