Question to the experts - Raid

Usual Suspect · 13 Dec 2006 at 12:12

I had a RAID 0 setup on my old PC. 2*160 SATA drives. Bought a new PC and connected the drives up. I can get them to be seen as a raid but it doesnt detect the old raid setup and is showing the 320 gig as unpartitioned space. Can someone help me out here pls. All my lifes hoarding is on them disks and i really dont want to zap it all.

Usual

Mr. Brightside · 13 Dec 2006 at 12:19

Never done anything like that myself so this is just a complete guess but have you had a look around in the RAID setup at boot time? Perhaps the stripe size has to be set correctly?

Like I said I've never transferred an array before so I could be talking complete rubbish but thought I'd mention it anyway.

Hope this helps, null

vanandjuanunited · 13 Dec 2006 at 12:20

If its different raid controllers I assume it will not work but wait for a more definite reply.

rpstewart · 13 Dec 2006 at 13:13

williamw11 said:
If its different raid controllers I assume it will not work but wait for a more definite reply.

That's a correct assumption. I've heard of arrays being moved successfully between controllers from the same manufacturer but not across manufacturers.

What are the new and old motherboards?

Usual Suspect · 13 Dec 2006 at 13:15

from a asus p4c800 D to a giga DS3.

anyone know any 3rd party proggys that might be able to get this data off the drives?

Mr. Brightside · 13 Dec 2006 at 17:02

If you still have the old board, plug them into that and shunt the data across onto another drive. Then, with your data safe, plug the RAID pair into the new board and create your RAID setup, install OS etc. and then copy old files back from temporary storage drive.

I had a feeling it wasn't possible to transfer arrays between boards but thought it worth trying checking the RAID setup area.

Hope this helps, null

Dr_Evil · 13 Dec 2006 at 17:04

is it your system drive or data only?

Usual Suspect · 16 Dec 2006 at 11:30

there is a system on the raid.. but i only want the data off. Nolonger hanve the old board. The Pc was sold to make room/funds for my new PC. Is there no software that could recreate the raid and pull the data off?

rpstewart · 16 Dec 2006 at 11:49

I don't know of any software that will do what you're looking to do. The problem is that the RAID array is created by and accessed by the RAID controller hardware, the easiest way to get the array back is going to be to find another P4C800 based system and plug your disks into it.

Captain Fizz · 18 Dec 2006 at 12:03

Usual Suspect said:
Is there no software that could recreate the raid and pull the data off?

Not to my knowledge.

You will either need to buy a mobo that uses the same RAID chip as your old one or see if there's a controller card that uses the same controller.

That is the ONLY way to get the data back.
It doesn't matter if it's Raid0, 1, 5 ETC... All need the same controller to get the data back.

A little research into RAID before doing it would have prevented this...

sniper007 · 19 Dec 2006 at 11:09

Captain Fizz said:
Not to my knowledge.

You will either need to buy a mobo that uses the same RAID chip as your old one or see if there's a controller card that uses the same controller.

That is the ONLY way to get the data back.
It doesn't matter if it's Raid0, 1, 5 ETC... All need the same controller to get the data back.

A little research into RAID before doing it would have prevented this...

I agree with you apart from the RAID1 part. Due to the nature of RAID1, one of the main benefits of it (in my experience) is that whenever a RAID1 array does break you obviously have all of the data on one disk as they are mirrored. I didnt think this required any special RAID controller to view this data and can be plugged into any SATA controller as a single drive and is easily accessible as is not dependent on the other disk in the array.

Or in other words: your raid 1 array breaks and you want to move one of the healthy disks out and into your friends Dell/HP desktop with just normal SATA connections, it will just be seen as a normal drive with all your data on.

If someone can confirm this I'd be grateful.

EDIT: Im almost 99% sure Ive done this in the past myself.

Cheers

bledd · 19 Dec 2006 at 12:09

pretty sure

file scavenger 3 can find data from broken raid arrays..

Captain Fizz · 19 Dec 2006 at 13:39

sniper007 said:
If someone can confirm this I'd be grateful.

Yep - RAID 1 should be fine.
(Had some sleep now!

)

But RAID0 or 5 (etc) needs the same controller.